University of Massachusetts Amherst University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 2012 Dramaturg as Artistic Instigator Dramaturg as Artistic Instigator Megan J. Mcclain University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses Part of the Other Theatre and Performance Studies Commons, and the Playwriting Commons Mcclain, Megan J., "Dramaturg as Artistic Instigator" (2012). Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014. 880. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/880 This thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected].
Transcript
University of Massachusetts Amherst University of Massachusetts Amherst
Dramaturg as Artistic Instigator Dramaturg as Artistic Instigator
Megan J. Mcclain University of Massachusetts Amherst
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses
Part of the Other Theatre and Performance Studies Commons, and the Playwriting Commons
Mcclain, Megan J., "Dramaturg as Artistic Instigator" (2012). Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014. 880. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/880
This thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected].
Approved as to style and content by: ___________________________________________________ Harley Erdman, Chair ___________________________________________________ Regina Kaufmann, Member ___________________________________________________ Priscilla Page, Member ___________________________________________________ Daniel Sack, Member
________________________________________________ Penny Remsen, Department Chair Department of Theater
DEDICATION
To my family for their unconditional support, and to all those theatre artists
(dramaturgs and otherwise) who are inspired to instigate and dare to devise.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my thesis chair, Harley Erdman, for his indefatigable
support, dramaturgical wisdom, and immense kindness. I offer my gratitude to
Gina Kaufmann for her probing questions and open collaborative spirit. Thank you
to Priscilla Page for the encouragement and guidance, and thanks to Daniel Sack for
the thoughtful advice and positive energy.
I am extremely grateful to the entire cast and crew of Beyond the Horizon,
who dared to embark with enthusiasm and vigor into uncharted theatrical territory.
It was from their collective imaginations that the full realization of this project
sprung forth, and I stand amazed at their creativity. To my director and dramaturg
partners in artistic crime, Brianna Sloane, Carol Becker, Daniel Sack, Alison Bowie,
and Adewunmi Oke, I give my deep thanks for the heart and hard work you put into
Beyond the Horizon. The festival could not have happened without you, and it was a
pleasure to create new work by your sides. I would also like to thank Quinn
Bauriedel for sharing his artistry and devising strategies, Will Power for his support
and advice during the project, and Matthew Glassman for eloquently expressing his
passion for collaborative theatre creation to our audience.
To Christopher Kelly, thank you for believing in me always and supporting
my artistic dreams these last three years.
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ABSTRACT
DRAMATURG AS ARTISTIC INSTIGATOR
MAY 2012
MEGAN J. MCCLAIN, B.A., BALDWIN‐WALLACE COLLEGE
M.F.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
Directed by: Harley Erdman
Dramaturgs have been struggling to define themselves and assert their raison d'être
in the American theatre for the past four decades. In an evolving theatrical
landscape that includes expanding new play development processes and new modes
of collaborative interdisciplinary theatre‐making, the role of the dramaturg must be
reexamined in order for it to stake a new artistic claim in the field. Devised theatre‐
making processes rely on dramaturgical practice as an integral part of generating,
editing, and structuring performance material and offer a fertile artistic avenue for
dramaturgs to utilize their skills. To explore the role of the dramaturg in devised
theatre, I chose to curate a festival of three new devised works entitled Beyond the
Horizon. This thesis describes in detail my role as curator in the planning, creation,
and execution of the festival, as well as my role as a dramaturg within the devising
process of one of the three works. To encompass both the idea of the dramaturg as
an active co‐creator of performance and an empowered facilitator of change, I
proposed a new title for the role: artistic instigator. Drawn from my conclusions and
discoveries while working on the Beyond the Horizon festival, I have formed a
description about how the dramaturg‐as‐artistic‐instigator might function within
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devising ensembles, propose changes to current new play development practices,
and advocate for expanded methods of play‐making.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................................. v
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................... vi
2. BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT ............................................................................................... 8
The State of the Dramaturg in Contemporary Theatre Practice ............................. 8 Dramaturg as Curator ............................................................................................... 12
Devised Theatre and the Dramaturg ................................................................. 17
3. FESTIVAL PLANNING .............................................................................................................. 22
Expanding Dramaturgies: Designing an Evening of Devised Performances ...................................................................................................................... 22
Dramaturg as Artistic Instigator ........................................................................................ 79 APPENDICES
A. NIGHTINGALE PRODUCTION SCRIPT .............................................................................. 89 B. NIGHTINGALE ARCHIVAL SCRIPT .................................................................................... 98 C. TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN ARCHIVAL SCRIPT ................................................... 106 D. WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED ARCHIVAL SCRIPT ....................................................... 119 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................................... 131
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Dramaturgs have been struggling to define themselves and assert their
raison d'être in the American theatre for the past four decades. In the preface to
their 1997 anthology, Dramaturgy in American Theater: A Sourcebook, editors Susan
Jonas and Geoff Proehl remark, “...the days of forever needing to explain what a
dramaturg does are coming to an end” (vii). Though the title “dramaturg” appears
in more playbills, is included in more theater staff directories, and has an active
organization, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA),
dramaturgs in America are not yet free of the endless explaining when it comes to
describing what they do even fifteen years later. In February of 2012, The American
Voices New Play Institute (AVNPI) at Arena Stage held a convening titled “The 21st
Century Literary Office” that sought to address what AVNPI Director Polly Carl
called on HowlRound’s blog “one of the great mysteries of the American theater”: the
role of the dramaturg. And yet, far from being a failure, the open‐ended nature of
the dramaturg’s definition allows for growth and change in a fluid theatrical
landscape. From this nuanced complexity arises confusion, but also an opportunity
to redefine the dramaturg as a vital part of contemporary theatre making.
The role of the dramaturg must be reexamined in order for it to stake a new
artistic claim in an evolving theatrical landscape that includes expanding new play
development processes, new experimental modes of collaborative interdisciplinary
theatre‐making, and shifts in the way institutional theaters structure their artistic
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departments. The work of dramaturgs is varied and complex, ranging from research
to public outreach to new play development to designing projects and programs.
Attempts to define this multifaceted role lead early on to detrimental labels
including the dramaturg as a “watchdog” for the playwright or institution and as a
pair of “extra eyes” (the “extra” here indicating an implied dispensability of the
artist) that still linger (Proehl, “Images” 126). Definitions like these have placed
suspicion on the dramaturg and positioned the role as outside of the creative
process.
While such labels threaten to dismiss the dramaturg as superfluous in the
rehearsal room, there remains one element in the creative process upon which the
dramaturg is expected to fix his or her eyes: the text. The convening held this year
with its reference to the “21st Century Literary Office” places the dramaturg behind
a desk and under a mountain of scripts. According to Anne Cattaneo, the emergence
of the modern dramaturg in America coincided with the boom in new play
development in the 1970’s in regional theatres such as the Eugene O’Neill Theater
Center, the Guthrie, and Goodman Theatre (5). Early on the dramaturg was tethered
to text, reading large amounts of new scripts, organizing the incoming work, and
managing play development programing. Built as they were for a playwright‐
centered development process, regional theatres have been slow to embrace
alternative modes of play creation. Thus, the institutional dramaturg has been
disconnected from a fertile avenue of artistic potential: the dramaturg as co‐creator
in collaboratively devised performance. In a climate of shrinking permanent
dramaturg positions at regional theatres, positioning the dramaturg as a necessary
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force as both a co‐creator in devised theatre and a curatorial project leader opens
up new artistic opportunities for dramaturgs to gain stature as indispensable to
theatre‐making processes.
Devised theatre‐making processes rely on dramaturgical practice as an
integral part of generating, editing, and structuring performance material. In
devised theatre, “the performance text is, to put it simply, ‘written’ not before but as
a consequence of the process” (Turner and Behrndt 170). This type of open‐ended
process offers potential for the dramaturg to function as a vital co‐creator in devised
theatre. An example of the dramaturg as co‐creator can be found in Mira
Rafalowicz’s dramaturgical work on The Open Theater’s 1973 production of
Nightwalker. According to Allen Kuharski, through Rafalowicz’s active contribution
to developing the show, the “dramaturg emerged as a full creative participant” and
found a “distinct creative function” within the ensemble (151).
Though dramaturgy is central to various collective devising methodologies,
the investigation of the role of the dramaturg in such practices includes a limited
amount of scholarly work. In her 1994 landmark book, Devising Theatre: A Practical
and Theoretical Handbook, Alison Oddey does not include the dramaturg in her
discussion of key roles within devising companies. One of the newest contributions
to dramaturgical scholarship, The Process of Dramaturgy, by Scott R. Irelan, Anne
Fletcher, and Julie Felise Dubiner, focuses on production dramaturgy, but does not
mention devised theatre as an option for dramaturgs. The “new play dramaturg” in
the book concerns himself or herself only with the living playwright in a “writer‐
driven” process (Irelan, Fletcher, and Dubiner 77). Cathy Turner and Synne K.
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Behrndt briefly address the role of the dramaturg in devised theatre in their book,
Dramaturgy and Performance, but admit more scholarly work must be done to flesh
out this “emerging role” (168).
To explore the role of the dramaturg in devised theatre, I chose to curate a
festival entitled Beyond the Horizon, consisting of three new devised plays, a new
play reading, and panel discussions. In light of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil
disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and subsequent environmental catastrophes, the
festival considered how performance might illuminate the relationships between
the human and the non‐human and offer community response to ecological crisis.
The theme for the festival arose in response to a campus‐wide initiative issued by
the University of Massachusetts Academic Deans. Their program, titled “Deans’
Theme,” chose a topic each year for disciplines across the campus to engage with via
classes, projects, and speakers. The Deans’ Theme for the 2011/2012 academic year
was the 2010 BP Gulf Oil Spill.
By addressing this theme, the Beyond the Horizon festival provided a
platform for the Theatre Department to participate in an interdisciplinary
conversation through performance. Though theatre is often described as a site for
exploring the human condition, that human condition is intrinsically linked to the
conditions of all other life on this planet. On the Steppenwolf blog, Artistic Director
Martha Lavey, describes how artists give an important voice to the most pressing of
social and scientific issues:
The research that science and scholarship produce is the foundation of our collective knowledge; the crafting of that knowledge into image and language is the task of the artist. Those images, those metaphors
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provide story for hard science. They humanize and make vivid the story of science.
The festival asked devising participants to utilize embodied performance as a means
of transmitting knowledge about our relationship to the spill and our evolving
relationship to the natural world. The devising ensemble members, armed with the
power narrative has to illuminate and express the most beautiful mysteries of
humanity and our physical world, became empowered artists dedicated to
addressing artistically and critically the complex scientific and socio‐political issues
facing our nation and our world today.
For this project, I planned to adopt a strategic position in overseeing the
structure of the entire festival, while also taking up a tactical position as a
dramaturg within the creative process of one of the three devised works. I saw the
project as an opportunity to conduct practice‐based research to contribute to the
burgeoning conversation about the role of the dramaturg in devising processes. The
festival also presented a chance to explore how a dramaturg‐as‐curator might
function as the primary role in staging encounters between the performers and the
audience, between artists, and between the festival events and the community at
large.
I found that the worn‐out definitions and persistent stereotypes associated
with the role of the dramaturg needed to be discarded in favor of a new description
that might accurately describe the creative work dramaturgs can do both in terms of
curation and in devised theatre. To encompass both the role of the dramaturg as an
active co‐creator of performance and an empowered facilitator of change in the
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theatrical landscape, I proposed a new title: artistic instigator. More than just
another title for a role that has juggled fluid and multiple definitions, both negative
and positive, this label points to an intrepid theatre artist who is unafraid to disrupt
the status quo of the traditional theatre hierarchy. Encompassing more than the
dramaturg’s usual power of influence, the artistic instigator has the power of action,
but wields it with the skill of a true collaborator, attentive to the creative voices of
others. The mischievous instigator, imbued with a dramaturg’s inquisitive spirit,
constantly questions how and why theatre is made and dares to propose new
methods.
Drawn from my conclusions and discoveries while working on the Beyond
the Horizon festival, I have formed a description about how the dramaturg‐as‐
artistic‐instigator might propose such changes to current theatre practices and
advocate for expanded methods of new play‐making. Within the devising process,
the instigating dramaturg can contribute mentally and physically to the shaping of a
new work. The dramaturg, as Deborah Wood Holton suggests, works as a
“cartographer,” recording and interpreting the creative landscape of rehearsals,
while also carving out the artistic terrain on his or her feet (251). Skilled in
generating and navigating archival materials, the devising dramaturg is positioned
to innovate new methods of capturing textural and somatic elements of devised
performance for future use. A dramaturg’s journal of his or her experiences can
provide a blueprint for further scholarly research on the subject of the dramaturg’s
role as co‐creator in alternative methods of theatre‐making.
7
Far from being a superfluous outsider, the dramaturg‐as‐artistic‐instigator
takes artistic risks, co‐creates, advocates, and curates. In order to thrive in our
current theatrical landscape, dramaturgs must design their creative destinies and
choose their own artistic adventures. Devised theatre offers a site for dramaturgs to
occupy a “radically heightened collaborative and creative role” (Kuharski 145). It is
my hope this project will serve as one model for artistic adventure that dramaturgs
may use as a field guide as they continue to expand, define, and explore their
shifting roles both in devised theatre, and as empowered creative leaders in the
field.
8
CHAPTER 2
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
The State of the Dramaturg in Contemporary Theatre Practice
One of the oldest and most well worn labels for the dramaturg is the “in‐
house critic” (Cattaneo 10). Gotthold Ephraim Lessing is considered the first
modern dramaturg, mostly for his work as a resident critic at the National Theatre
in Hamburg. While there, he wrote a collection of essays on dramatic principles and
show reviews, which were published under the title Hamburgische Dramaturgie. His
goal was not to praise the work of the theatre he was employed by, but rather to
“enlighten the mass and not confirm them in their prejudices or in their ignoble
mode of thought” (Schechter 29). His reviews challenged both the audience and the
performances and, unsurprisingly, left some on the creative teams insulted.
Lessing’s work as a resident critic did much to shape contemporary thought
on the role of the dramaturg in America. In the pedagogical sphere, one of the top
dramaturgy training programs in the country, Yale University’s MFA/DFA in
Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, focuses on training students to be dramaturgs,
literary managers, educators, and scholars as well as to work as “critics,” according
to the Yale School of Drama website. This program, which originated as a critical
writing program before dramaturgy was added to the title, was designed with a
focus on the German model of “dramaturgie” or “the theoretical study and criticism
of dramaturgic structure and the theatrical event” (Zelenak 105). Out of Yale’s
program came ideas of dramaturgs functioning as the “conscience of the theatre”
(Zelenak 105). The use of “conscience” here implies that there is a right way and a
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wrong way to do theatre, and the dramaturg is the moral entity that can identify
which is which and will gladly inform and guide those who are wrong. Around this
time, the ideas of the dramaturg as a critic, a know‐it‐all, and smarter‐than‐thou
arise, stereotypes which still persists today.
In tandem with this notion of the dramaturg as an embodied “conscience” in
the rehearsal room, came the idea that the dramaturg should operate as an outside
eye during the creative process. While having a dramaturg consider a play from the
audience’s point of view can yield important insights during rehearsals, the notion
of positioning the dramaturg “outside” grew more extreme and in some cases
threatened to remove the dramaturg from the creative process altogether. Geoffrey
S. Proehl, a past president of LMDA, has declared that while “dramaturgy . . . is
inseparable from theatre making” the dramaturg “is not finally essential to the
rehearsal process” (“Dramaturgy and Silence” 27). Proehl suggests the most a
dramaturg can do is provide a presence in the room to remind the rest of the team
that the dramaturgy of a play is important. This perspective grossly undervalues a
dramaturg’s work, and it also insultingly implies that the actors, director, and design
team need a Big Brother presence to keep them from ignoring the inner workings of
a play. The dramaturg and artistic team work together to uncover the dramaturgy
of shows whether they be classics or new works. Instead of positioning the
dramaturg as active collaborator, Proehl paints the role as both superfluous and as
an imposing policing presence to the theatrical work at hand.
Proehl is not alone in his assertion that the dramaturg is redundant to the
theatre‐making process. In 2001, while serving as president of LMDA, D.D. Kugler
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remarked in an interview with Judith Rudakoff that while he was in favor of a
“dramaturgical way of thinking” being embraced by artistic teams, he himself would
“kind of advocate for the withering away of the dramaturg” and announced his wish
that “the institutional position wasn’t necessary” (106). Though other members of
the artistic team may complete dramaturgical tasks, their attentions must
eventually turn elsewhere to complete their primary function in the production
whether it be acting, directing, or designing. It is “the depth to which a dedicated
production dramaturg engages” in the process that “sets them apart from other
members of the artistic team” (Irelan, Fletcher, and Dubiner 133).
Though the negative associations attached to the role are damaging, equally
troubling is the gendered language surrounding the dramaturg. Peter Hay has
called the dramaturg a “midwife” that “routinely assists at the birth of the play or
production” (79). He is not the only theatre professional to take up and run with
this moniker or other feminized ideals of the dramaturg. In his list of the complete
skills a dramaturg should have, Leon Katz mentions “decorum” twice in relation to
dramaturgs knowing when to speak their thoughts and when to be seen and not
heard (116). Proehl writes, “the dramaturg’s work finds a voice in the language of
the production ‐ it is audible ‐ but the source of that voice is invisible and so, in a
manner of speaking, silenced” (“Dramaturgy and Silence” 27). The invocation of a
traditionally female position (midwife) coupled with the attributes of silence and
supportiveness often assigned to the role results in an image of the dramaturg that
is “at once rarefied and servile” (Wolf 103). In this servile position, dramaturgs can
find themselves underpaid (if paid at all) and their “invisible” labor undervalued.
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“What can you point to on the stage that is a result of your work on the
show?” This is a question dramaturgs are often asked, myself included. When asked
a similar question by an audience member during a talkback, Dramaturg Mark Bly
replied, “ I can’t point to anything specifically, but if you took a knife to that play, it
would bleed me” (Chemers 3). The pressure for dramaturgs to define themselves
and their worth by the tangible products they contributed to projects and
performances has lead to definitions of the dramaturg that amount to little more
than an outlining of supportive administrative tasks. In a scramble to prove that
they were indeed contributing to productions, dramaturgs began pointing to every
bit of concrete evidence of their work including actor packets, casebooks, study
guides, program notes, and script reports. While these may be parts of a
dramaturg’s labor, the intangible and invisible labor happening in a dramaturg’s
own intellect and in discussions with the artistic team can shape ideas that impact
what is presented on stage, how it is presented, and why. Value must be placed on
both the practical and conceptual work that goes into creating performance. These
administrative lists of tasks limit and dilute the discussion of the larger
contributions dramaturgs can and have made in shaping new artistic programs,
originating projects, and acting as co‐creators in theatre‐making.
Former Senior Dramaturg of the Guthrie Theater, Michael Lupu, wonders if,
to be heard, dramaturgs “need to move on within the system and ascend to higher
and more prominent positions such as director, producer, associate artistic director,
or . . . artistic director” (109). In addition to positioning the dramaturg on one of the
lowest rungs on the artistic ladder, Lupu suggests the dramaturg acquire a title with
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more respect and power, rather than seeking to empower the role of the dramaturg.
If the role is to thrive, it’s time dramaturgs begin making themselves visible and
placing themselves in the public sphere by curating and instigating play
development, performance, and public programing.
On LMDA’s official website, the organization defines the role of the
dramaturg in part in this way:
In the ecology of theatre‐making, dramaturgs and literary managers forge a critical link between artists and institutions, and institutions and their communities. They work with their other artistic collaborators to hone their vision, focus their goals and find outlets for their creative work on new and classical plays and dance pieces.
Dramaturgs are positioned as bridges, facilitating encounters between artists as
well as between the performance and the public. They are also framed as a bridge
between conceptual idea (“vision” and “goals”) and practical application, between
the dream of a new theatrical landscape and its realization. Mark Bly insists,
“dramaturgs need to dream about what's possible—about what could electrify the
space between audiences and artists—and then bring the hope and fervor of those
dreams into the American theatre” (Brown). More aptly, then, the dramaturg is not
just a physical link, or bridge, but also a creative engineer, designing new plans for
engagement and collaboration between artists, theatres, and the public. Not only
does the dramaturg pave the way, he or she is cognizant of how those interactions
are constructed, and what form will serve to best connect these groups.
Dramaturg as Curator
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Michael Bigelow Dixon sends out an impassioned call in his 2003 article co‐
created with Liz Engelman titled “What Makes a Turg Tick : Two Dramaturgs
Discuss What They Like About Their Profession and Why They Do It” which
challenges up and coming dramaturgs to have a greater hand in shaping theatrical
practice and programing. He asserts, “So please, let’s not work in the margins, let’s
not only respond, let’s not restrict our imaginations to fit an out‐of‐touch job
description. Let’s be inventors and architects, enablers, and advocates for the
theatre of our time as we dream it” (98). This call pulls the dramaturg out from the
margins of the back of the rehearsal hall and into a new realm of creative
empowerment. His invocation of “inventors” and “architects” suggests going back to
the drawing board to not only reinvent the dramaturg for the 21st century, but also
build the sort of theatrical events and programing that speak to an evolving
theatrical landscape. Dixon’s labels of “enablers” and “advocates” make sure to
position dramaturgs as still connected to a collaborative spirit, rather than
disconnected as separate entities outside the theatrical process.
Dixon and Engelman are not the only ones to suggest that dramaturgs pursue
artistic empowerment. In her blog article for HowlRound titled, “I Dare Us: A
Manifesto for the 21st Century Literary Office,” Julie Felise Dubiner maintains
dramaturgs “have amazing skills, but we have become unable to fully utilize them or
grow as artists and people in our own right. We must get out of our offices and bring
ourselves back into the creative process.” Scholar Tamsen Wolf insists that “rather
than clinging to or protesting the peripheral nature of their work within theatres,
dramaturgs could generate more of their own work and ideas into the public
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sphere” (104). These impassioned words call on the dramaturg to become a leader
and as LMDA’s definition of the role suggests, get out of the office, and to make good
on that promise to be a “critical link” between artists, theatres, and communities by
spearheading and curating new projects.
Dramaturg and freelance performance curator Norman Frisch closely aligns
the goals of dramaturgy and curation. Frisch describes dramaturgy as “the practice
of relating form to content, or style to subject matter” and curation as “a matter of
finding the appropriate presentational format for the subject under investigation”
(273). Dramaturgs, well trained in the shape and structure of theatrical
performance, can lend that sensitivity to a curation process when it comes to
designing, presenting, and framing theatrical and public programing. Both the
dramaturg and the curator are concerned with how to stage an encounter between
the subject (whether it be a physical object, a space, or performance) and an
audience.
The dramaturg must be able to put form to the presentation of what
performance studies scholar Diana Taylor calls the archive and the repertoire.
“Archival” memory, according to Taylor, “exists as documents, maps, literary texts,
letters, archaeological remains, bones, videos, films, CDs, all those items supposedly
resistant to change” (19). For the dramaturg, the archive in a theatrical register
refers to the objects that capture traces of performance. These objects might
include published theatrical works, manuscripts of new works, design renderings,
videos of performance, and so on. The dramaturg is often tasked with selecting
these objects to exhibit in connection with theatrical programing whether the task is
15
choosing scripts for play readings or design renderings for a lobby display. The
archive of a specific performance might include any research the dramaturg has
collected and presented either to the artistic team or the audience through displays
or program notes.
For the dramaturg, however, curatorial duties extend outside of an
engagement with the archive and into the realm of the repertoire. According to
Taylor, the repertoire consists of “embodied memory” and might include
“performances, gestures, orality, movement, dance, singing” (20). Though a
dramaturg might stage a play reading and draw upon the archival object of a script,
the event itself, comprised of bodies and voices communicating the script, is part of
the ephemeral repertoire. The dramaturg as curator is staging an encounter,
whether it is between the audience and the archive, the audience and the repertoire,
or a combination of the two.
Whatever encounter is designed, the dramaturg must keep the audience in
mind when creating form and content. Live performance and public programming
at theatres must compete with television, film, the internet, and the multiple screens
(ipods, ipads, laptops, smart phones) to which people have glued their gaze. Now
more than ever, dramaturgs need to develop programing that engages audiences
and artists in new and thoughtful ways. Recently, dramaturgs have stepped to the
forefront of curating theatrical and performance programing across the country.
Support of this trend is clearly evident in the creation of the Dramaturg Driven
Grant in 2010 by LMDA. This grant offers money to projects that are designed or
spearheaded by LMDA member dramaturgs. Though the content of the projects
16
may vary widely, a dramaturg at the helm and as the driving force of the proposal is
the major requirement. Dramaturgs do not have to be attached to any professional
theatre to win a grant and are thus empowered to create projects that address their
own visions.
Examples of the dramaturg’s potential for engagement with both archival
and repertorial elements while creating innovative programming are reflected in
the project winners of LMDA’s Dramaturgy Driven Grants. In its first few years,
recipients of the grants have designed and curated play readings, performances, an
interactive site‐specific promenade event, and a creative retreat for artists. A
number of these projects push the boundaries of theatrical offerings and embrace
new modes of storytelling that are ambiguous, multifaceted, and interactive. Fall
2010 recipient Laurel Green worked in collaboration with two designers to create
Untangled Headphones, an intimate performance for three people who are each
guided by wireless headphones through a site‐specific space. The event used
archival material (the recorded sound) and the repertoire (unwitting performances
between participants) to create a unique theatrical experience.
Though dramaturgs may concern themselves with the interaction between
the archive, the repertoire, and the audience, they may also turn their attention to
curating experiences for artists. Winner of a Spring 2011 Dramaturgy Driven Grant,
Ilana Brownstein lead the Freedom Art Theatre Retreat that took 9 artists
(playwrights, designers, and dramaturgs) from Boston and gave them a week in the
woods of Maine to collaborate. In this instance, Brownstein has staged an encounter
between artists. This staging of the repertoire (the retreat itself, including all
17
discussions, improvisations, and shared physicality) had the potential to lead to new
archival material (ie: play scripts, videos, sketches).
Devised Theatre and the Dramaturg
If the dramaturg is one of the most misunderstood positions in the theatre,
devised theatre, as a misunderstood method of play‐making, is its misfit
counterpart. Much in the same way people furrow their brows when trying to figure
out what a dramaturg does, the question, “What exactly is devised theatre?” is often
posed and not without good reason. Like “dramaturg,” the term is infused with
multiple meanings depending upon the specifics of the situation and whom one
asks.
How does devising differ from traditional script‐based theatre? Heddon and
Milling offer a useful distinction that marks devising as “a mode of work in which no
script – neither written play‐text nor performance score – exists prior to the work’s
creation by the company” (3). A script might not be present at the outset, but
devising ensembles do sometimes start from text‐based research or adapt or
reinvent classic stories, plays, novels, or folk tales. Though the performance score
will, by necessity, become an original creation, a play‐text might be a starting place
for a group, even if it is unrecognizable by the end of the process.
“Devising” and “collaborative creation” are often used interchangeably,
though the process of devising doesn’t necessarily imply collaborative creation. In
Collective Creation, Collaboration, and Devising, Bruce Barton separates
collaboration, which he sees as a “self‐imposed framework and structure” or
18
“context,” and devising, which he defines as “adopted strategies and rules” or
“process” (ix). A theatre auteur may choose to employ devising strategies to create
a new work that clearly expresses his or her singular artistic vision with support
from a theatre company. Robert Wilson could be considered an example of a
theatre auteur. Working within a collaborative framework, an ensemble might
employ devising strategies to craft the content of a show from their collective
discoveries, rather than from the mind of one auteur. There is no single devising
system or methodology, but rather a multiplicity of processes, as diverse and
idiosyncratic as the ensembles that employ them. Some elements that are often
invoked when describing the process of devised theatre include the use of multiple
voices, texts, and authors, as well as collage or montage assembly of performance
materials, and improvisation as a means of generating content.
Alison Oddey describes devising as “a process of making theatre that enables
a group of performers to be physically and practically creative in the sharing and
shaping of an original product that directly emanates from assembling, editing, and
re‐shaping individuals’ contradictory experiences of the world” (1). In this
description, the emphasis is on the process of an ensemble of performers that share
ownership and authorship of the performance. The multiplicity of voices, far from
being a problem, is expressed as a desirable quality. In this way, one performance
can allow for many points of view as opposed to the vision of the (singular)
playwright. Integral to the process and embedded in this definition of devising is
attention to the dramaturgy of the work through “assembling, editing, and re‐
shaping,” all domains of the dramaturg (Oddey 1).
19
An early example of the dramaturg functioning within devised theatre can be
found in Mira Rafalowicz’s work with Joseph Chaikin on The Open Theater’s 1973
production of Nightwalk. In her only published work about her collaboration with
Chaikin, Rafalowicz describes part of her role as “adding to the texture of thought”
during the development process, while “asking questions” (161). In her description
of her work, she often uses the term “we,” placing herself inside of the larger
ensemble and indicating the shared nature of dramaturgy in devised theatre. For
Rafalowicz, the dramaturg helps shape the devising process by facilitating questions
from the group to “define the area of exploration,” shaping and editing content,
reevaluating the work with the help of the “outside eyes” of trusted visiting artists,
and polishing the smaller details of the final performance (161).
Though dramaturgs have been functioning in experimental devising
processes for years, there remains a relatively small body of scholarly writing
exploring how the dramaturg functions in these play‐making models compared to
the work addressing the role of the dramaturg in traditional script‐based models.
This could be the result of the enormous task of tackling two topics, both devising
and the role of the dramaturg, that are each so idiosyncratic, so specific to each
different performance project. It could also be attributed to the fact that devising
ensembles don’t always have a designated dramaturg in the room, but rather share
dramaturgical duties across the group. For example, the Rude Mechs, a devising
troupe out of Austin, TX, see the dramaturg as “a collective position that orbits most
closely (thus far) around the director and playwright” (Lynn and Sides 111). For the
group, the project’s director and writer work together to edit and assemble written
20
material created by the ensemble. Given the baggage associated with the title
“dramaturg,” it is unsurprising that Rude Mechs member Kirk Lynn, while editing
writings from the ensemble during a project, found that “people have less trouble
being edited by the playwright than they do by the dramaturg” (113).
There also is a hesitance from some devising groups to accept someone in a
dramaturg’s role into their process, particularly if that dramaturg is coming in as an
outsider to the ensemble. At the 2010 American Voices New Play Institute
convening on devised work, ensembles shared horror stories of working with
institutional dramaturgs brought in late in the development process that sought to
“fix” the play (Sobeck 3). An old and detrimental definition of the dramaturg, the
“play doctor” or one who arrives to perform surgery on an ailing theatrical piece, is
a feared stereotype that continues to stymie what could be fruitful collaborations
between devising ensembles and dramaturgs (Prohel, “Images” 126).
At that same convening, however, members of devising ensembles did
suggest that someone in a dramaturgical role could be useful so long as they were
“pulled fully into the process” (Sobeck 4). Building a relationship between the
ensemble and the dramaturg earlier in the creation process avoids casting the
dramaturg as an outsider who is there to meddle with the play. If the dramaturg is
attached to an institution, a collaborative relationship developed with the ensemble
early on could keep the dramaturg from being perceived as a watchdog for the
producing company. Most importantly, spending time in rehearsals during the
development phases offers the dramaturg a chance to learn the performance
vocabulary of the group and begin to speak its language. Understanding an
21
ensemble’s performance framework(s) and the specific show’s internal logic will
keep the dramaturg from applying his or her own proscriptive frameworks, rules, or
standards to the creation of the new work.
In my interview with Co‐Artistic Director of Pig Iron Theatre Company Quinn
Bauriedel, he addressed the topic of the dramaturg by saying, “We like to have
people in the room who are making stuff.” His implication was that if the dramaturg
is not part of the creation process, and is merely an outside eye or passive observer,
that the ensemble doesn’t have much use for one. Pig Iron has used non‐company
member dramaturgs in the past who had an expertise on topics the ensemble was
exploring for performance. Bauriedel insisted that the dramaturg must, in addition
to any specialized knowledge, have a sense of shaping and structuring theatrical
moments and the ability to know what might be needed in any given scene. He
suggested that dramaturgs must bring more than research to the table in the
devising process. He warned that the dramaturg can sometimes be “too much a
scholar” and not enough a creator in the process. This is a key difference between
production dramaturgy on a script‐based process and a devising process. One can
function as a scholar and provide lectures and research packets on a production of a
finished play, but devised theatre and new play development ask for different
skills. Devised theatre demands of a dramaturg a rigorous command of theatrical
structure, rhythm, and shape. It also asks dramaturgs to speak up, create, and start
“making stuff.” Discovering what that “stuff” might be and how it gets made are the
questions at the heart of this thesis.
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CHAPTER 3
FESTIVAL PLANNING
Expanding Dramaturgies: Designing an Evening of Devised Performances
In the spring of 2011, Theater Department Chair, Penny Remsen, encouraged
the department to address a new initiative set forth by the Academic Deans of the
University of Massachusetts Amherst. The campus‐wide program, titled “Deans’
Theme,” would choose an “overarching topic of broad societal or scientific
importance” to provide a “shared focus” for disciplines across the campus to engage
with via classes, projects, and, speakers according to the program’s website. For the
2011‐2012 academic year, the Academic Deans selected the 2010 BP Gulf oil spill as
the theme. Penny tasked the MFA Dramaturgy candidates with finding a way to
address the Deans’ Theme in their proposal for the Theater Department’s upcoming
2011‐2012 season.
Rather than choose an existing script that staged environmental concerns, I
proposed to the dramaturgy team that we utilize a devised theatre model to address
the Deans’ Theme. An ensemble of students would respond to the issues
surrounding the BP spill through original and collaboratively created performance.
The interdisciplinary nature of the Deans’ Theme initiative seemed to lend itself
naturally to a devised theatre‐making process. Devising provided a desirable
framework, as it would allow for hybrid performance, including the blending of
theatrical forms with other modes of artistic expression, as well as the possibility of
interdisciplinary participants serving as ensemble members. It was important for
me to stage conditions in which students who might not have a performance focus,
23
but who might have vital interdisciplinary perspectives regarding the theme, would
have the chance to collaborate and shape the devised work.
Such work allows for multiple points of view to be woven into the fabric of an
original play by the co‐creating ensemble. This model, rather than one reliant on the
singular view of a playwright, mirrored the Deans’ Theme pedagogical quest for
multiple conversations to occur around a shared focus. The devising model would
also open up opportunities for participants to be empowered in a process that
would value their voices and give them co‐ownership of the work. In her article on
the Dell’Arte International website, “Devised Theatre: No Guts No Glory,” Joan
Schirle describes how devised theatre provides a space for artists to address
contemporary social concerns. She writes:
There has been a long, bleak period (which seems to be ending, due in no small part to dire world events) in which the American theatre abandoned its role as a forum for ideas, a place where the most important issues of the day were explored, juggled, and given imaginative life by passionate theatre artists . . . In the absence of a courageous and compelling theatre that speaks to their concerns, devising has been a way for young artists to engage with each other in the wondrous territory where art and ideas co‐mingle to generate excitement, provocation, even hope.
The combination of the devised theatre‐making model and the Deans’ Theme would
challenge ensemble members to address an important and historic event with
environmental, economic, social national, and global implications through
performance.
In March of 2011, Professor Priscilla Page and I wrote the initial description
for a proposal to create a devised theatre piece in response to the Deans’ Theme.
This proposal was pitched to the faculty along with the larger proposal of plays for
24
the upcoming season. In April, the devised project was accepted. Originally
proposed to take place in room 204, a very small studio in the UMass Fine Arts
Center, faculty member Harley Erdman suggested the project be moved to the larger
black box space, the Curtain Theatre, and that the incoming MFA Directing
candidates be involved. This proposed venue change, the involvement of incoming
students, and the full inclusion of the project in the department’s season seemed to
signal that the faculty valued the project as a learning tool and artistic endeavor. At
this time, I agreed to curate the project and use it as the basis for my thesis to
investigate the role of dramaturg as an artistic instigator as well as the position of
the dramaturg in devised theatre.
I structured the project as a devised theatre festival in which three devising
ensembles would create three thirty minute theatre pieces, each one exploring the
Deans’ Theme of the BP Gulf oil spill. The festival was scheduled to run in the spring
of 2012, April 5‐7 and 10‐14, marking the two‐year anniversary of the BP
Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. Though the spill would serve as a research
starting point, I wanted to broaden the artistic scope of the festival. For this reason,
I chose to title the festival Beyond the Horizon to both reference the Deepwater
Horizon disaster while simultaneously looking forward to larger ideas surrounding
humankind’s evolving relationship with the natural world.
I split the festival into three separate pieces to give ensembles a chance to
more fully develop and shape smaller original works. Knowing the timetable from
start to finish would be tight, dividing the project between three groups seemed the
best way to create a full evening of theatre, without burdening one ensemble with
25
making a full length and perhaps less‐developed piece. Three more intimate groups
would allow for greater trust and ensemble cohesion to be fostered during the
process. This format would also present the audience with what I could only
assume would be three very different takes on the festival theme. I was excited to
track what patterns might emerge between the three finished works and how they
might be in conversation with each other in performance.
Professional devising troupes sometimes take years to develop one show
from conception to performance. Unfortunately, the festival’s ensembles did not
have that luxury. The project was slated in the Theater Department’s season, which
follows a production model allowing six weeks from the first rehearsal to the first
performance. Though casting the ensembles early to get a jump‐start on the process
was possible, I felt it would limit the number of people who might audition. The
Theater Department’s audition calendar was structured in such a way that casting
early meant students would be shut out of a chance to audition for any other spring
show if they were cast in Beyond the Horizon. The other spring shows included
popular titles such as Urinetown: the Musical and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was
afraid students would be hesitant to make a choice about auditions so early in the
fall semester. I believed casting in the regularly scheduled spring slot along with
Midsummer would net a greater pool of potential performers/co‐creators.
Though I envisioned the ensembles co‐creating the pieces together, I knew
from the start that I wanted to establish team leaders to guide the groups through
the rehearsal process. These team leaders would include a director and a
dramaturg. Many professional devising ensembles including TEAM, Pig Iron
26
Theatre Company, and Elevator Repair Service have a person in the room who
identifies as a director. This person often oversees the rehearsal process and helps
structure the performance material. With the short rehearsal process allotted for
the festival (only six weeks to create ninety total minutes of original material), I
wanted the focus and leadership a director would bring, especially since most of the
students participating would be unfamiliar with devising processes. In an attempt
to defuse the hierarchical implications inherent in traditional theatre models and to
empower the role of the dramaturg in the process, I planned to pair each director
with a dramaturg to create a process model that valued them as equal co‐
leaders. By including a dramaturg on each team I wished to “welcome a more
formalized engagement with dramaturgical discussion, analysis, and reflection” in
the devising process (Turner and Behrndt 169). Though the dramaturgical work
would be shared across the ensemble, I wanted a dramaturg present and able to
devote his or her full attention to the shape of the piece and facilitate conversations
about structure.
In addition to spearheading the festival, I cast myself as a dramaturg in one of
the ensembles. This performance practice‐as‐research model would allow me to
conduct a hands‐on investigation of the role of the dramaturg in devised work. I
also anticipated drawing upon the experiences of the two other dramaturgs working
with the other devising ensembles. I began a production journal to document my
findings and planned to interview my fellow dramaturgs about their discoveries in
the middle of and at the end of the process. I was curious to learn about what
27
devising strategies they would adopt and how they would interact with their
ensemble and their co‐leader director.
The directors chosen to lead the ensembles included entering graduate
directing students, Carol Becker and Brianna Sloane, as well as Daniel Sack, the Five
College Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Performance Studies and a faculty member of
both UMass and Amherst College. In October of 2011, I paired each director with a
MFA dramaturgy candidate, resulting in the teams of Carol and Adewunmi Oke,
Daniel and Alison Bowie, and Brianna and myself. I knew the pairings were the first
crucial step in the production process. In devised theatre, every member of the
ensemble shapes the final product. I assigned team members based on their
overlapping theatrical interests, similar artistic aesthetics, and shared interests
surrounding the Deans’ Theme. Once paired, I asked directors and dramaturgs to
develop a question or theme to explore that related in some way to the Deans’
Theme or humankind’s interactions with the physical world. This question or focus
could be changed or modified later in the process, but would offer a starting place
for their ensembles’ work.
My dramaturgical sensibility guided me to ask questions of the directors and
dramaturgs rather than set down rigid rules about themes or the content they
would explore with their ensembles. The groups could choose to address any
number of ideas and questions surrounding the Gulf oil spill. At the first meeting of
all six directors and dramaturgs in late October, we began tossing around potential
sites of artistic inquiry. How do technology and innovation affect our relationship to
the natural world? How do we map the world, and how do explorations into
28
unknown territory bring both new resources and disaster? How do we address the
ideas of responsibility, damage, and repair not just in terms of large‐scale human‐
created disasters, but also in our personal lives? In addition to posing my own
questions, I created a website filled with dramaturgical research about the BP Gulf
oil spill, and presented it to the director/dramaturg teams as a creative jumping off
point. Each of the six directors and dramaturgs could add research to the site so
that it might grow organically as a central hub for inspiration, accessible to all
teams.
Sparking Conversation: Panel Discussions
While laying out the festival structure in October 2011, I knew I wanted to
create a space for reflection and discussion where audiences would have a chance to
engage with the larger theme of ecology at work both in the subject matter of the
project, as well as its collaborative process. Since the Theatre Department did not
regularly present devised work, I decided to produce a series of post‐show
discussions as an opportunity to educate audiences about this model of theatre‐
making. I scheduled post‐show discussions with members of the artistic teams for
April 6 and 13.
I also developed two themed panel discussions to follow the Beyond the
Horizon performances on April 12 and the afternoon of April 14. The first, titled The
Ecology of Theatre: New Models of Theatre Creation, was designed to explore theatre
creation that lies outside of traditional script‐based models as well as what role(s)
ensemble members play in such models. Will Power, a playwright and performer,
29
was scheduled to speak and share his knowledge of devised, interdisciplinary, and
collaborative work. In the fall, I continued to look for other guests to speak about
alternative theatrical practices to fill out the panel.
The second panel discussion, titled Intersections: Where Art, Science, and
Society Meet would investigate how artists, ecologists, and social activists address
socio‐scientific issues and raise awareness about the ways individuals and
communities impact the natural world and each other. I wanted to expand
conversations surrounding how the devised works engaged with the theme of the
festival by inviting environmentally minded campus and community members to
speak on this panel. I turned to the list of faculty members engaging with the Deans’
Theme in their classes to scout for potential panelists as well as a list of
environmental groups on campus. The timing of the panel proved prohibitive for
some potential guests, but in the end, I confirmed that Meghan Litte, a member of
the UMass Permaculture Initiative, would take part in the panel. I planned to fill the
remaining panelist slots with members of the Beyond the Horizon artistic team, who
would speak to the ways in which scientific and environmental research influenced
their processes.
The Way of Water: Play Reading
In addition to laying the groundwork for the devised pieces, I wanted the
festival to include a play reading of a new script by a theatre professional that
examined the relationship between humankind and the physical world. This
companion event would situate our festival in the larger conversation of how artists
30
are engaging with socio‐scientific issues through performance. There is growing
interest for this type of work, as evidenced by Earth Matters on Stage’s annual
Ecodrama Festival, which awards workshop productions and readings to plays that
relate to ecology, and the 18th annual Chicago Humanities Festival, which featured
readings of commissioned one‐act plays that addressed the topic of climate change.
In January of 2012, dramaturg Heather Helinsky, after hearing about Beyond
the Horizon, contacted me via email about collaborating in some way with
playwright Caridad Svich’s The Way of Water: 2012 Reading Scheme. According to
Heather, the reading scheme would be comprised of multiple readings of Caridad’s
new play, The Way of Water, throughout the month of April in theatre venues across
the country and the world. The Way of Water explores the lives of four people
affected by the BP Gulf oil spill.
Caridad chose not to utilize verbatim interviews or use a documentary
theatre approach to give life to the stories that were coming out of the Gulf after the
spill. Rather, she created a poetic play with fictional characters to explore the real‐
life consequences of the disaster. Jimmy and Yuki, two poor fishermen, and their
wives, Rosalie and Neva, are struggling to make ends meet as the lingering effects of
the oil spill ravages their livelihoods. When a young boy dies after swimming in
water polluted by Corexit, the chemical used to disperse the oil slicks, the two men
must decide how much more they can take. Yuki, eager to express his outrage, sets
out to join protesters challenging the oil company, while Jimmy seems submersed in
denial. That denial turns out to be a symptom of his refusal to admit his own
31
deteriorating health, also ravaged by the polluted water. In an interview with
Daniella Topol, on The Way of Water blog, Caridad says of her play:
. . . the play merges layers and levels of research with my own take on the situation in the Gulf region, and the impact the disaster has had on men and women who have been tenders of the waterways their whole lives, whose very livelihoods indeed depend on the ways of water . . . real events are woven into the fabric of events I've dreamt up as a writer. Poetry, politics and a human story are at the play's core. Here is a love story between people and their environment, between men and women, between friends, and between children and the legacies into which they have been born.
Caridad’s dramaturgical research on the lingering negative effects on the
livelihoods and health of those in the Gulf following the BP spill lends her play an
urgency and weight. The script provided an interesting take on how theatre artists
are speaking to the effects of environmental pollution on a human‐scale, while using
theatre to raise awareness about concerns that might otherwise disappear in our
24‐hour news cycle culture.
Not only did the subject matter of The Way of Water correlate directly with
the theme of the Beyond the Horizon, but including a reading of it offered the festival
a chance to take part in a larger dialogue stretching across national and
international borders about the impact of the BP spill and our relationship to the
environment. Heather Helinsky wanted to feature and cross‐promote Beyond the
Horizon on the reading scheme’s blog, while also promoting UMass’ reading of The
Way of Water. This opened up the entire Beyond the Horizon festival to greater
public exposure. It was my hope this coverage might also highlight devised theatre
as a viable mode of producing meaningful theatrical work to address important
issues facing our world.
32
It was of interest to me to hold the reading in a public space to reach
community members outside of the Theater Department and UMass. Professor
Priscilla Page suggested Food for Thought Books in the center of Amherst. Food for
Thought Books Collective is a local, independent, not‐for‐profit workers’ collective.
Its website outlines part of its goal as creating “a space where voices, people, and
ideas silenced and ignored by the mainstream media are given room to be heard, to
be seen, to be supported, and to be realized.” This seemed an ideal venue to present
a play about the marginalized voices coming out of the Gulf after the oil spill. It also
offered an opportunity to promote Beyond the Horizon to the greater Amherst
community. April 10th was set as the date for the reading and Dawn Monique
Williams, an alumna of the MFA Directing program at UMass, was selected to direct.
33
CHAPTER 4
BEYOND THE HORIZON
Auditions
Auditions for Beyond the Horizon were slated for January 30 and 31, with
callbacks on February 1. All directors and dramaturgs gave input into the
discussion of how the audition process should be conducted. The project, due to its
devising model, demanded ensemble members who could generate content and
effectively communicate whatever narrative or story resulted. All three teams were
interested in many modes of storytelling including spoken text, movement,
puppetry, dance, and song. We wanted to keep the door wide open to unusual
talents and test the creativity of students by challenging those auditioning to
generate or assemble their own audition material. The audition requirements were
posted as follows on flyers:
Please prepare 2‐3 minutes of material that best showcases your talents. This could include a monologue, a poem, a joke, song, dance, a musical instrument performance, a movement piece, storytelling, circus arts, puppetry, a display of your own special talent, or any combination of those. Whether choosing one or more of the above, what is most important is that you use the time to show us what you do best.
The flyer was later revised to remove the list of possible skills one could
showcase and instead read, “actors can give a monologue, singers can sing, dancers
can dance” to avoid confusion for students who were unused to such an open
audition process and might be intimidated by too many options. All flyers contained
a description of the festival’s mission to address the Deans’ Theme and explore our
evolving relationship with the natural world. In addition to the audition flyer, I
34
created a poster that targeted science, environmental studies, and ecology students
who might be interested in participating, but who might not feel comfortable
auditioning for a performance. It asked for students to email a description of their
research interests and to describe any experience they had in community programs
that engage with wildlife or the environment in lieu of auditioning.
On January 30 and 31, around sixty students auditioned for all three pairs of
dramaturgs and directors. Those who auditioned displayed a wide array of talents
including singing, dancing, monologue work, puppetry, poetry, circus arts, and
musical instrument performances. The auditions succeeded in bringing in students
from various academic disciplines including dance, music, theatre, business,
medicine, English, and earth sciences. After students presented their prepared
material, directors and dramaturgs had the chance to ask to see something more
from performers or make adjustments to their pieces.
Callbacks for Beyond the Horizon were scheduled for February 1 and held at
the same time for all three teams, but in different spaces. Daniel and Alison, with an
interest in those who could communicate physically and through written text, gave
students writing prompts and improvisation exercises utilizing masks Daniel had
crafted. Carol and Adewunmi, mainly interested in singers and dancers, asked
students to create movement phrases and improvise songs in response to
inspirational quotes and images related to the environment. Brianna and I focused
our improvisation exercises on movement. We asked those called back to respond
to excerpts of nature writings we had collected as well as to the theme of connection
verses disconnection. We were looking to see how the students used movement to
35
express abstract concepts and how they interacted with each other. In our search
for a balanced ensemble that would work together effectively, Brianna and I
watched carefully and noted how individual students initiated a creative impulse,
responded to our adjustments, or followed the creative impetuses of others in the
room.
After callbacks, Brianna and I discussed our casting choices, weighing heavily
what skills each potential member would bring as well as their passion for the
subject matter and their interest in working within a collaborative creation
model. Without preset roles to cast, we had to take into consideration individual
personalities and skills, how those personalities and skills might work in a group
dynamic, and how to best structure a balanced ensemble. The three
director/dramaturg teams created their ideal cast lists, negotiated over a few
names, and settled on a final list each. Across the three teams, 21 students were
selected in total. The whole process of arriving at final lists together took less than
fifteen minutes and was conducted with a spirit of respect and generosity. Though
we were crafting three ensembles, I reminded the group that we were all part of the
same project.
As per the Theater Department’s usual audition scheme, the other spring
play, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, guest directed by Shakespeare &
Company’s Artistic Director Tony Simotes, had auditions at the same time in a
different studio with their callbacks scheduled for February 2. Typically,
department productions in the spring show slots audition in the same week or even
in the same room and later the directors of each play get together to discuss casting
36
options. Department policy stipulates that students not be consulted during this
process and they are not asked to indicate what their preference might be in terms
of casting. I requested that Beyond the Horizon hold separate auditions from A
Midsummer Night’s Dream due to the differing audition requirements for the two
shows. Production management and faculty indicated the process of casting would
be negotiated as usual, though this time not between directors only, but between
Tony Simotes and the Beyond the Horizon director/dramaturg teams.
The first casting meeting scheduled for Friday, February 3 was cancelled the
day of without explanation by the production manager, Julie Fife, and rescheduled
for Monday, February 6. The Beyond the Horizon team of directors and dramaturgs
(with the exception of Daniel, who was out of town) walked into the rescheduled
casting meeting expecting a conversation with Tony Simotes and to arrive at final
cast lists for Midsummer and all three ensembles for the festival. Instead, we were
met by Theatre Department Chair Penny Remsen, Julie Fife, and Tony Simotes’ cast
list. Julie indicated that due to the very special opportunity students would be
afforded by working on Midsummer with Tony Simotes, it had been decided that
everyone on his list would be cast in his play without discussion. Julie noted that
she and Penny had been “swayed” by Tony’s reasons behind his casting decisions,
though up to this point, the Beyond the Horizon team had been given no chance to
articulate the method or reasoning behind their casting.
Though the Beyond the Horizon team and I expected to make serious
concessions and compromises in casting, we were unprepared for production
management's decision that indicated being a supernumerary fairy in a Shakespeare
37
play was a more valuable experience for a student than the opportunity to be an
integral part of creating and shaping new work. It was impossible to distinguish
whether this casting decision resulted from a sincere belief that working with Tony
was in the students’ best interest, a pejorative view of devised theatre, a disregard
for new work in the face of Shakespeare, the fact that Beyond the Horizon was a
nearly exclusively student‐driven festival as opposed to Midsummer that had a
professional director attached to it, or some combination thereof. Whatever the
reason, in that moment, the hierarchy of productions was made abundantly clear:
Midsummer reigned.
As the festival curator, the responsibility fell to me to advocate for the
validity and importance of our project and our process. I responded to the casting
announcement by expressing my shock and disappointment at being mislead by the
meeting’s purpose and the decision to disregard the validity of our festival. I
explained the care and consideration that went into selecting our ensembles. I
advocated for the artistic opportunities devised theatre offered, including allowing
students to become empowered artists and providing them a space to nurture their
artistic voices. The directors and dramaturgs of Beyond the Horizon also voiced
their feelings, which opened up a conversation about casting. At no time was the
Beyond the Horizon team allowed to look at Tony’s cast list, which seemed highly
unusual. We were only informed as to the overlapping names on the lists. One third
of the total cast for Beyond the Horizon was slated to star in Midsummer. In the end,
Penny allowed us to make a case for those on our list who were supernumeraries in
Midsummer.
38
A few days later, Penny called a meeting with the graduate student directors
and dramaturgs to apologize for the manner in which the casting was announced to
us. She also offered a space for us to air any lingering feelings or concerns.
Appreciative of the gesture, but still smarting from the sting of the first meeting, I
knew we had too much work to do to be slowed by this first bump in the artistic
road. I rallied the group to focus our energies on the project at hand. The
dramaturgs and directors were still tasked with going back to our audition notes to
fill out our cast lists with new names. Shaken by the casting meeting, but excited by
the prospect of our new ensembles, the Beyond the Horizon teams and myself
pressed onward in the process.
Professional Workshop
From my position as curator overseeing three ensembles, it was important to
me to foster cohesion across the entire Beyond the Horizon artistic team at the
outset of rehearsals and set up all ensembles for success in their processes. I
wanted to supply all cast and crew with a devising workshop that would present
some devising methods and exercises for generating performance content as well as
helping to establish a shared vocabulary within ensembles. Though a devising
course was offered that spring in the UMass Theater Department, it was the first of
its kind available in the last two and a half years. I wanted the Beyond the Horizon
participants to feel confident and prepared for the work ahead. It was imperative to
me to offer support programing for students and participants who might not have
any experience with devising.
39
Scheduling a workshop also seemed a natural extension of my dramaturgical
duties. Dramaturgs are expected to provide research before and during the
rehearsal process, though that research often takes the form of archival materials,
whether they are text, images, or videos. For this process, I wanted to stage an
encounter between a professional devising theatre artist and the Beyond the Horizon
team. If, as Jerzy Grotowski once said, “[k]nowledge is a matter of doing,” than a
workshop drawing upon the dissemination of embodied knowledge relating to
devising strategies seemed the most useful option for the work that lay before us
(qdt. in Arlander 78).
After hearing of my search for a devising professional, Professor Harley
Erdman suggested I contact Quinn Bauriedel of Pig Iron Theater Company, a
professional devising group based in Philadelphia. Founded in 1995, the OBIE
award‐winning Pig Iron Theatre Company has created over 25 original theater
works and toured to festivals and theatres nationally and internationally. The
mission of Pig Iron Theatre Company in part is “to create original performance
works which test and break the boundaries of dance, drama, clown, puppetry,
music, and text . . . to develop a physical, theatrical performance technique that
draws from many performance traditions . . . to reach out to new audiences by
redefining theatre as an interdisciplinary art form . . . and to pose the difficult
questions of our difficult times” (Salvato 209). I was drawn to the group’s focus on
interdisciplinary and collectively created work and its passion for tackling complex
questions about our world through performance.
40
I also wanted to be sure I invited an artist that would be skilled at interacting
with students, particularly those who might be new to theatre‐making or
devising. It was clear to me that Quinn Bauriedel and Pig Iron valued educating
performers since they recently created the Pig Iron School for Advanced
Performance Training. According to the school’s website, members of Pig Iron have
instructed hundreds of students in universities, colleges, and high schools.
Bauriedel’s position as Co‐Artistic Director of the company and his extensive
experience acting, directing, and teaching made him an excellent choice to lead a
workshop at UMass.
After corresponding with Quinn and securing funding for his visit through a
grant submitted to the UMass Arts Council, I scheduled a workshop for February 19
for the entire Beyond the Horizon team (designers and crew included). The four‐
hour workshop emphasized the generating of original material, the building of
characters through physicalization, and the structuring of group improvisations. I
shared the theme of our festival with Quinn, who then integrated it into a discussion
about how to explore abstract concepts through devising techniques. For Quinn, the
BP Gulf oil spill conjured up ideas of collapse: the collapse of the oil rig, the collapse
of injured animals, the impending collapse of the infrastructure of fossil fuel
companies.
This discussion grew into an improvisation exercise expanding upon the
many ways to address collapse in performance. The exercise, called Blank Canvas,
offered a space for collaborators to sketch out an idea or response to whatever
theme was being explored. Additional performers could layer their own
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contributions to any sketch by joining the “canvas.” After a physical sketch was
presented, the area was cleared and ready for the next sketch. This gave
participants a chance to delve into physical explorations and respond to each other
in a supportive low‐risk setting. Later, groups of five composed short performance
pieces that built upon any physical or textual discoveries we had made over the
course of the workshop. This experience provided an array of valuable devising
techniques, as well as a space for participants to start trusting their creative
impulses and respond physically to stimuli, particularly abstract conceptual
ideas. Perhaps most importantly, the workshop offered an opportunity for all three
devising groups to play together as one before splitting off into separate
rehearsals. In the following section, I will outline my experience as a dramaturg
inside the devising process of my ensemble in detail, while touching on the
experiences of fellow dramaturgs Alison and Adewunmi.
Rehearsals
Before rehearsals began in mid‐February, my director partner Brianna and I
met to decide what research, questions, and inspiration to focus on initially with our
ensemble. What struck me most about the BP oil spill, aside from the suffering of
humans and thousands of animals, was how impossible it all seemed as it played out
in real time in 2010. Though witnessing the catastrophe via television brought me
closer to the disaster, those mediated images and video of the spill also caused me to
feel utterly disconnected from the event. The “spill cam,” which appeared on every
news media outlet throughout the eighty‐seven day ordeal, showed live video
42
footage of the broken pipe spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. Framed as
it was to show only the sight of the leak, the “spill cam” felt disembodied from the
rest of the oil rig and the rest of the ocean around it. The video, captured at 5,000
feet below the water’s surface, seemed as though it was from another world. The
paradoxical feeling of being brought closer to nature thorough technology while
simultaneously feeling alienated from it became a starting place for Brianna and
me. We kicked off our first rehearsal on February 13 by asking the ensemble to
delve into the theme of connection verses disconnection in regard to humankind’s
relationship with nature. We saw the Deepwater Horizon disaster positioned in a
long line of destructive actions by humans that harmed the earth and all its
inhabitants. Our question became, “How do we reconnect with nature?”
To answer our question, Brianna drew upon the writings of her childhood
hero, nature writer Rachel Carson. Carson, the author of Silent Spring and
considered by many to be the mother of the modern environmental movement,
posited that it is through a child‐like wonder that one might return to a healthy
relationship with nature. She wrote, “The more clearly we can focus our attention
on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have
for destruction” (111). We wanted our piece to capture some part of that wonder
and leave the audience with a sense of connection to the natural world. My function
as dramaturg in these early conversations was to share ideas, but also to ensure
Brianna and I had enough material to provide an inspiring and clear starting place
for the ensemble.
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We began our rehearsals on February 13 with an ensemble comprised of
undergraduate students Annelise Neilson, Devyn Yurko, Katrina Turner, Samantha
Creed and Lisa Bettencourt. Lisa’s schedule conflicts caused her to drop out of the
show after the first week, but due to the malleable nature of roles in devised theatre,
Brianna stepped in as the fifth performer. The doubling of her role also signaled a
new role for me. I would now lend a directorial eye to the scenes in which she
would take part. This decision was embraced by the ensemble and seemed the best
course of action given the casting troubles the process had already endured.
We set to work by spending ample time sharing research. Brianna and I
came in with texts from Rachel Carson, while the rest of the group brought in songs,
text, images, and discussions surrounding the oil spill as well as ideas of beauty and
destruction in connection with the environment. As dramaturg, I contributed and
collected materials, making note of where interests and ideas overlapped,
identifying possible narrative structures, while also marking areas for further
research.
The group immediately hooked into Carson’s words and began looking at her
as a possible character in the piece. In Silent Spring, Carson outlines the harmful
effects of DDT on animal life. At the time she wrote the book, DDT was being
sprayed over crops and in suburban neighborhoods to control mosquitos. Deeper
probing into Carson’s work lead to the discovery of a 1948 Life Magazine cover that
showed model Kay Heffernon in a bathing suit, drinking a Coke, and eating a hotdog
surrounded by a cloud of DDT. DDT photo shoots like the one illustrated in the
image and live DDT spraying demonstrations, we learned, were conducted in public
44
spaces to prove the chemical was harmless to humans. The image prompted many
questions. Who was this toxic beauty queen? Why and how were women being
used to sell dangerous products? We began generating ideas about an apocalyptic
world in which everything was toxic. What was the hierarchy of this world and who
or what was being controlled and contained by poisons?
Into our budding theatrical world, and partly in response to the vivid
research images of oil covered birds from the BP spill, ensemble member Annelise
Neilson introduced Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale The Nightingale to the
group. In this story, an emperor discovers a beautiful nightingale and invites it to
sing for him in his castle. In honor of the bird whose fame travels far and wide, a
leader of a neighboring kingdom sends the emperor the gift of a mechanical bird
that winds up and plays music. Soon everyone is enamored with the mechanical
bird. Forgotten, the nightingale flies away. But when the emperor lies dying and the
worn‐down mechanical bird can offer no comfort, it is the nightingale who returns
and sings a song that chases away Death. The group was drawn to the theme of
choice in the story, as the emperor choses what is man‐made at the expense of what
is natural. He must learn to reconnect with nature in order to stay alive. We were
also interested in having a protagonist bird character on stage to contrast with our
idea of a mechanical chemical spokeswoman, the toxic beauty queen.
To our growing pot of characters, we added trickster figures or storytellers
who could move between the materialistic world of the toxic beauty queen and the
natural world of the nightingale. As an archetypal figure, the trickster’s association
with childhood, impishness, and humor made it an appropriate addition to the
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emerging fairytale structure we were shaping. The opening of Silent Spring
provided more inspiration for our fairytale theme as it begins with “A Fable for
Tomorrow” (Carson 1). The embodiment of Carson’s “child‐like wonder,” we saw
these trickster creatures as the audience’s guides through the story. Our next step
was to build all of our characters, the tricksters, the nightingale, Rachel Carson, and
the toxic beauty queen on paper. In a circle, we began describing and debating
character traits for each one. When we discovered Carson and the tricksters shared
almost all the same traits (curious, impish, child‐like, playful, dreamer, subversive),
we deleted Carson as a character, but retained her writings to use as text for the
piece.
Though I served as a researcher, scribe, and record‐keeper during these early
rehearsals, once up on our feet in the second week, Brianna and I both lead and
participated in games and exercises with the ensemble. The groundwork of ideas
we laid out during table work gave us plenty of characters and scenarios with which
to play as we started to give form to the material we had assembled. We began to
flesh out our characters through improvisation and movement. One by one and in
groups, members of the ensemble would present improvised interpretations of each
one of the characters we created. This collective character‐building model offered
many different possibilities as to how each character should move and speak. For
example, taking inspiration from 60’s public service announcements, “duck and
cover” campaigns, and 60’s television commercials, each ensemble member wrote
and presented text for the toxic beauty queen. In each presentation, ensemble
46
members favored an over‐the‐top silly interpretation of the character. Kitsch and
camp defined our collective view of the Toxic Beauty Queen’s style.
These group improvisations also lead to a particular animalistic yet playful
physical vocabulary for the trickster characters. Nearly non‐verbal, the tricksters
relied on physical comedy and slapstick in their interactions with one another. They
utilized finger snapping, butt slapping, and child‐like nonsense noises to
communicate. During this process, the most engaging character choices were
repeated or elaborated on by the ensemble members, while less interesting choices
naturally fell away. I continued to participate in the exercises and take written
notes during this process, noting any emerging patterns that arose from our
interactions with the research material. I also recorded our brainstorming notes on
large sheets of butcher paper so the whole team could add to, access, and return to
the information.
Armed with compelling characters, in the third week of rehearsal we set out
to find the narrative of our piece. I began thinking about how to bring these three
different kinds of characters into a cohesive story. Were their narratives intertwined
and overlapped? Did they all interact with each other or just occupy the same toxic
world? What was the dramaturgical logic of our play? Whose story, ultimately, were
we trying to tell? To get to some answers, Brianna and I asked the ensemble to
write down their version of the story, taking into consideration everything we had
talked about up to that point and the loose framework of Anderson’s The
Nightingale. At the end of the writing exercise, we each presented our five different
takes on where the story could go.
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The dramaturg has been called a “compass‐bearer” in the devising process,
and I found that description an apt one, particularly during rehearsals (Turner and
Behrndt 176). With many different narrative roads to travel down, at this point in
our process my role was to navigate the waters of artistic difference and organize a
cohesive narrative with the group. I began mapping our multiple points of overlap
and the shared theatrical moments in our individually written narratives. In a room
with six unique artistic opinions about our evolving story, my role also included
facilitating productive discussions to avoid conflicts within the ensemble. The
points of narrative agreement I recorded became a useful place to base our
conversation as we talked through how to blend our different versions of the story
into one.
In the end, we created a simple narrative comprised of moments written on
index cards. A bird arrives in a toxic world. It is captured, held captive, and has its
wings clipped by a society that considers it an “undesirable organism.” Trickster
characters find one of the bird’s feathers and try to return it to her, but are
repeatedly foiled. The toxic beauty queen arrives at intervals to remind the
audience of the necessity and danger of chemicals used to maintain “our way of
life.” The level of “undesirable organisms” escalates causing more chemical blasts,
which eventually leads to the breakdown of the beauty queen (our loose stand in for
Anderson’s mechanical bird). The tricksters, meanwhile, construct new wings for
the bird, which ascends from its captivity.
Once the structure had been collaboratively agreed upon, we began to flesh
out each one of the moments we had outlined with more concrete content. In
48
crafting the different elements of storytelling in the piece, we began drawing on the
various skill sets and strengths of the ensemble members. We knew we wanted
song to play a central role so we sat down together and deconstructed bits of Rachel
Carson’s text to create the lyrics for the opening number and the nightingale’s
song. Katrina, an a cappella performer, arranged music and suggested a cyclical
blues structure to tie back to the Gulf. Devyn improvised musical melodies. I mixed
Katrina’s vocals into an mp3 soundscape to underscore heightened moments in the
show. We also wanted to expand on the physical vocabulary and imagery in the
piece. Annelise, an accomplished dancer and choreographer, created physical
phrases for the tricksters as well as a dance number for the toxic beauty
queen. Brianna suggested shadow puppetry as a mode of storytelling for our nearly
text‐less tricksters to execute. Finally, Brianna and I worked in tandem on writing,
combining, and editing the toxic beauty queen text, while I also focused on creating
a working script.
During rehearsals, I visited the other two devising teams to offer my support
and see how they were navigating the process. Daniel and Alison spent the first few
rehearsals on what Alison called “the development of team” and not content. They
both lead trust and team‐building exercises that allowed the ensemble members to
open up to each other and take artistic risks. Once their rehearsals shifted to focus
on generating content, Alison believed her role, as dramaturg, was to act as a “bank
of information” by collecting the materials brought in or created by the ensemble.
Not only did she gather the text, images, and sound recordings the group offered,
she also captured the rehearsal process by video recording every rehearsal and
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photographing exciting moments. Acting as a self‐described “filter” for the
materials, Alison, in conversation with Daniel, began editing and shaping a script
from the group’s contributions.
According to Alison, her ensemble’s piece focused on the notion that an
unheeded warning brings disaster. They sought to investigate how humans struggle
to communicate after catastrophic events. Alison described the play in terms of
“movements” or self‐contained, but relating parts of a whole piece. The first
“movement” opens with voices calling out into a pitch‐black theatre. In the second
and third movements, to address the idea of waste and disaster, the team decided to
spill hundreds of plastic water bottles all over the playing space. This wasteland
would provide the setting for an exploration of how communities respond after a
devastating event. The fourth movement contained a slow building cacophony of
actor‐generated monologues. The monologues were inspired by the real and
imagined stories of those impacted by the BP oil spill including journalists, citizens,
rig workers, and BP CEO Tony Hayward. Some of the monologues reinforced the
feelings of loneliness and hopelessness that follow catastrophes, while others
focused on the premise that we must rely on one another when disaster strikes. In
the fifth movement, performers roamed the wasteland of bottles in the dark. Armed
with flashlights, the performers picked up bottles and read the messages inside. For
Daniel and Alison, the messages in the bottles were the ultimate hopeless act, an act
that paradoxically asks for hope. The entire ensemble wrote messages for the
bottles, and because of the random nature of the way the bottles were spilled,
different messages were read every time it was rehearsed.
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When I visited Carol and Adewunmi’s ensemble’s rehearsals, I saw them also
dealing with the question of how people cope and move on after a disaster.
According to Adewunmi, the group wondered what we truly learn in times of crisis,
and how we might use that knowledge to prevent disasters in the future. Carol set
the structure of their ensemble’s piece from the very beginning. She decided it
would consist of six vignettes, each about five minutes long. Focusing directly on
the BP oil spill, Carol and Adewunmi asked their ensemble to improvise scenes and
songs in response to pictures of the devastation in the Gulf and quotes about the
environment. Carol and Adewunmi also asked their ensemble to explore the
different emotions disaster engenders through text and movement. They assigned
writing prompts that asked the team to write letters, either to the perpetrators of
the spill or from the points of view of those directly effected by it. Adewunmi
participated in bringing in materials and completing writing assignments. She also
collaborated with Carol to choose and organize the content created by the ensemble.
Together, they worked to integrate text, music, and dance elements into the
developing piece.
I was surprised and intrigued to note the different ways the
director/dramaturg pairs interacted with each other. Perhaps due to his position as
a faculty member at UMass, Daniel’s group responded to him as a clear authority
figure in the room. I witnessed ensemble members raise their hands to speak in
rehearsal, though Daniel never encouraged this behavior. In conversation with
Alison, she described her working relationship with Daniel following fairly
traditional roles. Once they had structured the content of their piece, Daniel
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concerned himself with staging, while Alison was responsible for the script. Alison
also mentioned that early on she had felt left out when Daniel made decisions
outside of the rehearsal room and brought them to the group. This style of creative
leadership was drawing upon an auteur devising model and rubbing up against
Alison’s expectations of her role as dramaturg. Drawing on their positive working
relationship and mutual respect, Daniel and Alison were able to discuss their roles
openly and resolve any tensions.
While watching Carol and Adewunmi work together, I marked Adewumni’s
quiet, but engaged presence in the room. In my interview with her, she mentioned
feeling very involved in the process and touched on her creative rapport with Carol.
They also seemed to follow traditional roles of director and dramaturg as Carol took
the lead in running rehearsals, while Adewumni focused on bringing in source
materials and shaping the script.
During rehearsals, the Beyond the Horizon directors and dramaturgs were
also engaging and collaborating with the design and production teams. The festival
as a whole was breaking new ground for the Theater Department in terms of its
structure and its play‐development process. Never before had UMass presented
devised theatre in such a way and with so many directors and dramaturgs at the
helm. The process asked for a different type of engagement from all involved, and I
actively encouraged those on the design and production teams to share in devising
by attending rehearsals.
The devising process opens up a chance for designers in particular to have a
greater voice in shaping a play’s narrative. It was my hope that this freedom would
52
entice designers to participate in a devising model that didn’t limit their artistic
ideas through a predetermined script. Evan Laux, the costume designer for all three
pieces, fully embraced the model, came to multiple rehearsals, and participated in
development of the pieces. His pictorial research directly influenced my ensemble’s
thought process as we crafted characters.
Though the student designers did attend rehearsals, seemed open to
collaboration, and appeared willing to give the devising model a chance, there was a
pervasive attitude in the production meetings that suggested the devising model
was looked upon with suspicion by some production team members, advisors, and
faculty. Though the ensembles were simply creating plays, the term “devised”
seemed to make a number of people in the room nervous. The label appeared to
carry a negative connotation that suggested the process of development was strange
or somehow less legitimate than a script‐based process.
It was not entirely unexpected that the directors and dramaturgs might feel
some resistance from department and faculty members accustomed to following a
traditional script‐based production model. Dramaturgs and directors were
repeatedly asked in production meetings by those who had never attended
rehearsals, if they had “really thought about” their artistic choices and production
needs. I wrote a play the year before, Unruly Mujeres, that received a workshop
production in the department, and never once was I asked by the production team if
I had “really thought about” why I included certain theatrical and storytelling
moments or particular technical requirements. In Beyond the Horizon production
meetings, there was tension surrounding the discussions as to when the three
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pieces would have fixed scripts. The open nature of the devising process seemed to
invite some members of the production team to assume that our pieces weren’t
legitimate until they were recorded on paper.
While I could not control how people felt about devised theatre, I addressed
this attitude by keeping the development process as open and inclusive as
possible. I also checked in with all three groups to make sure they were staying on
task and communicating their ideas clearly to the design and production teams. In
addition to setting and meeting the agreed deadline for the creation of working
scripts, the dramaturgs and directors on each team met with designers outside of
production meetings to discuss the artistic development of the pieces.
Design Run
Working scripts in hand, the Beyond the Horizon team presented its first
design run on March 14. Though I had been visiting the other teams’ rehearsals, this
was the first time I saw all three pieces together. After the design run, I asked
questions of the teams and gave notes. I encouraged the teams to talk to each other
about their processes, but did not force feedback sessions. My dramaturgical focus
shifted at this point from my team’s individual work to how the three pieces would
live and breathe together on stage. This work‐in‐progress run helped inform my
thought process as I considered how to construct the journey and compositional
structure of the festival as a whole.
Though the works were still in flux, after the run I noted each one’s overall
tone and contemplated how they might tell a story to the audience through their
54
order. Carol and Adewunmi’s team’s piece, What Have We Learned, relied heavily on
music and was composed of a number of loosely associated vignettes, related
directly to the BP oil spill. Its final song ended the piece with a challenge to the
audience to find connection to the natural world and each other or get left
behind. This piece, more than any other, addressed the Deans’ Theme and the
human stories coming out of the Gulf. I thought the audience would hook into this
examination of the human condition onstage and so I positioned it first in the
festival.
Daniel and Alison’s team’s piece, To whom it may concern, offered a tonal
counterpoint to the humor and song present in both What Have We Learned and my
ensemble’s piece Nightingale which prompted me to position it second in the
performance line‐up. It focused on destruction, the struggle for communication, and
the waste humans produce. To whom it may concern utilized a computerized voice
near the top of the show that would offer an interesting juxtaposition to the lush
musical voices of the preceding piece. While it addressed various points of views
surrounding those impacted by the BP oil spill, it ended with all the performers in
animal masks, suggesting a link between the human and animal worlds. I chose to
end with my ensemble’s piece, Nightingale, as this work traveled the furthest away
from the Deans’ Theme of the BP oil spill and more toward an examination of the
relationship between humans, the environment, and animals. It also had a solid
story arc, physical comedy, and a rousing dance number to carry the audience’s
attention through the evening’s end.
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Technical and Dress Rehearsals
Technical rehearsals started on March 31 leaving teams just one week of
rehearsals to address any notes from the design run and fine‐tune their pieces. My
ensemble’s piece was in good shape after the run, and my job as devising dramaturg
became about refining any unclear storytelling moments and supporting Brianna as
she worked with performers to deepen their acting choices. Going into tech, my
focus was trained on the structure of the entire show.
With an order established, it was up to me to develop the transitions that
would get the audience from one piece to the next. The transitions offered a place
for spectators to take a breath and reflect between works. We were asking them to
journey into three very distinct and different worlds, and so I wanted clean breaks
between the pieces. Lighting Designer Brittany Deventer helped to achieve this
through blackouts between pieces and transition lighting. Sound Designer David
Wiggall and I, with input from Directing Advisor Gilbert MacCauley, collaborated to
find a soundscape that mixed natural wind and surf with a hummed blues riff to
signal the transitions, while evoking the sounds of the Gulf.
Moving into the tech/dress rehearsal on April 3, the biggest transitional
challenge included how to get the 500 plastic water bottles spilled on the floor
during To whom it may concern off the stage for the beginning of the next piece. The
transition was long and clunky, with stage crew coming out to sweep the
bottles. We were still troubleshooting the transition when Department Chair Penny
Remsen (who in this instance was acting as an artistic director/producer hybrid in
the room) insisted that the end of To whom it may concern include the entire clean
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up of the bottles. Alison felt the change would compromise the dramaturgical
integrity of the piece and the meaning of the ending. Daniel also had trouble trying
to fit the request into the logic of the piece. I tried to ask questions and present
possible solutions that respected the work the ensemble had done and also sought
out an answer to the transition quandary before us.
The late dramaturgical intervention of the producer/artistic director put
Daniel and Alison under pressure to “fix” the ending of their piece to conform to her
wishes. This specific instance of tension between a devising ensemble and producer
is not an uncommon occurrence in the professional realm. Though it is important
for producers to ask questions of the devised work they are presenting, those
questions must stem from a combination of respect and open communication.
Devised theatre is a dialogue and an ongoing conversation. Melanie Joseph,
founding Artistic Producer of The Foundry Theatre suggests that the way in which
“presenters might engage in this process is something to think about not in terms of
fixing, but asking in the process of making” (Sobeck 58). In these cases, the input of
the producer/artistic director can yield important discoveries for the artistic team,
but the communication of such feedback requires a delicate and skillful hand.
A dramaturg can be helpful in facilitating productive conversations
surrounding artistic notes, though in this specific instance, I did not feel successful
in my attempts to do so in my role as curator. This challenge was exacerbated by a
couple of factors. First, I was hindered by my role, not as curator or dramaturg, but
as student. While navigating my empowered role as curator of the festival, I was
also caught in the larger power structure of the Theater Department. My position as
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a student limited the ways in which I could challenge the Head of the Theatre
Department acting as producer/artistic director. At my disposal were the same
tools of inquiry, listening, and brainstorming solutions, but the collaborative
creation model was now subject to the hierarchical structure of the department. A
second challenge I faced in this interaction between Penny, Daniel, and, Alison was
time. The conversation happened near the end of the day when all parties were
exhausted from a long tech weekend. I believe the desire to solidify an ending for
the sake of the actors and avoid a drawn out confrontation lead Daniel and Alison to
change the ending. They used the moment to regroup and find a creative solution to
the artistic problem at hand.
Performances
The Beyond the Horizon festival of devised works opened in the UMass
Curtain theatre on April 5, 2012. My focus for this portion of the process shifted
from the work of my collaborators to the experience of the audience. Knowing that
the Theater Department’s audiences would not be terribly familiar with devised
theatre, it was important for me to inform spectators about the nature of the work
they would see. At the start of each performance, I gave the curtain speech
addressing the collaborative nature of the creation process and its connection to the
Deans’ Theme of the BP Gulf oil spill. I also included a curator’s note in the printed
program to give audience members a sense of the festival’s origins. It read:
On April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon off‐shore drilling unit exploded. For the next three months nearly 5 million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, negatively impacting plant, animal, and
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human life. The full extent of the catastrophes aftermath is still unknown. Addressing this spill and its position in a long line of environmental disasters, the Beyond the Horizon Festival explores our ever‐evolving relationship to the natural world. Developed by a community of theatre artists, musicians, dancers, and environmentalists, the festival offers three original devised pieces that use the power of performance to illuminate interactions between humans and the environment of which we are all part. Theatre gives us a space to play out these sites of connection and disconnection. It creates a place to reassess our destructive actions and celebrate the most beautiful wonders of the world around us. Above all, it offers the chance to rediscover and announce what poet Mary Oliver calls our ”place in the family of things.”
In the note, it was important for me to contextualize the ecological nature of
both the festival’s subject matter and its collaborative creation. This ecology was
taken into consideration in the design of the program as well. Alison Bowie created
the program layout to include a fold‐out poster page. Each of the dramaturgs
contributed inspirational quotes that informed their ensembles’ processes for the
poster page which were printed atop a large photograph of the Gulf’s horizon at
sunset. Living together on one page, the collective research mirrored the spirit of
the festival, suggesting visually how the ideas and concepts with which the
ensembles engaged overlapped. The quotes were in conversation with each other
on the page, just as the performances were in conversation with each other on the
stage.
Each of the three pieces in Beyond the Horizon dealt in some way with the
breakdown of communication and the longing for connection, and I wanted to
reflect these shared ideas in the lobby of the theatre. Bundling together bare
branches and securing them in a pot of soil, I created a small tree to serve as an
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interactive lobby display. Next to the tree, I placed instructions for audience
members to share their hopes, wishes, or messages on pieces of green paper and tie
them to a branch. It also invited the audience to read the messages already hanging
there. The tree became a record of the messages, connecting the hopes of audience
members across nine performances. As it continued to “grow” each night, it
provided a space for the audience to release unexpressed feelings, share dreams,
and be heard. A complete list of the messages was recorded and posted on the
Beyond the Horizon festival website I created to promote the show.
Post‐show Panel Discussions
Adewunmi Oke lead the first post‐show discussion on April 6, featuring
Beyond the Horizon ensemble members Director Carol Becker, Performer Katrina
Turner, Costume Designer Evan Laux, Performer Kevin Cox, and Dramaturg Alison
Bowie. Adewunmi asked each of the team members to explain their roles and share
a bit about the work they contributed. Clearly illustrated in their various answers
were the overlapping roles inherent in the devising process. For instance, Evan
designed costumes and helped inspire characters for Nightingale, Katrina acted,
wrote, and arranged music, while Alison lead ensemble exercises, wrote, and edited
her team’s text.
Once the discussion was opened up to the audience members, it was clear
they were particularly curious to hear more about the devising process itself. One
spectator asked, “Where was your starting place and how did you devise your
pieces?” This prompted a discussion highlighting the teams’ journeys through the
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audition process, their strategies for generating material, as well as tracing how
germinal ideas found their full expression in the finished pieces. This gave
audiences a chance to hear the history of how particular visual moments they had
just watched began as simple ideas or whims.
Katrina spoke to how “natural” the devising process felt as characters
emerged from her group’s research and similar themes and moments kept repeating
themselves in rehearsals. She enjoyed how the process asked her to identify, tap,
and share her talents. She noted that when co‐creators are engaged with bringing in
inspirational materials they are passionate about in order to make work, that level
of ownership “makes for the best theatre.”
I moderated the first themed panel discussion titled The Ecology of Theater:
New Models of Theater Creation, which featured playwright and performer Will
Power and Beyond the Horizon directors Brianna and Daniel. I began by touching
upon some ingredients often found in devised processes including an ensemble of
co‐creators, improvisation exercises, and source material rather than a script as a
starting place to create a new work. I asked the Beyond the Horizon directors to
speak to the ecology of their ensembles and where they started in their devising
journey.
Brianna responded to the question by pointing to an “ecological mind‐set”
inherent in the devising process, one that is extended into the performance
space. She explained that in their collaborative process, she and her ensemble
strived to create work that would draw the audience into a relationship with the
finished piece. She said they tried to meet this goal by posing questions in
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Nightingale, rather than preaching answers. Conversations around devising models
often focus on how the co‐creators interact, but the audience, too, is asked to co‐
create the performance experience by thinking, drawing dramaturgical connections,
interpreting, and making meaning.
Many devisers take on multiple roles in the rehearsal room, and I asked Will
Power to address how, as a performer/playwright hybrid artist, he navigates the
ecosystem of professional theatre. He responded by stressing the importance of
original works, which artistically feed such a system. He insisted that it is through
the creation of original work that an artist can find his or her voice and address
meaningful social issues. Recognizing that in order for original work to thrive in an
environment teeming with artistic material, Will insisted such work needed more
support through development and funding. Producers and funders are also an
important part of the artistic ecosystem, and that night at the discussion two people
who have the potential to fund new work at UMass, Theater Department Chair
Penny Remsen and Vice Provost for Academic Personnel and Dean of the Faculty
Joel Martin, were in the house.
Though he could not attend the Ecology of Theatre discussion due to
scheduling conflicts, Matthew Glassman, a co‐director and performer at Double
Edge Theatre Company, joined the April 13 post‐show discussion as a special
guest. I focused this discussion on the devising strategies employed by Beyond the
Horizon artistic team members before opening up the conversation to address the
professional devised work being created locally at Double Edge, based in Ashfield,
MA. Matthew started off by acknowledging the varying methodologies and
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strategies of devising troupes, calling Double Edge singular in its approach to
creating theatre. Operating on a hundred‐acre former dairy farm, Double Edge uses
a collaborative play‐making model to craft and tour original work. Matthew has
worked with the group for over a decade and also leads their training programs,
which teach new generations of artistic leaders the ensemble’s art of collaborative
theatre‐making.
At the heart of Double Edge’s methodology is physical training, which
Matthew asserts prepares actors for a higher level of awareness and connectivity,
both to themselves and their fellow collaborators. It is this engagement with a
heightened sense of presence, Matthew insists, that allows for discoveries in the
creative process. When I asked him to describe where Double Edge starts when
embarking on a new project, Matthew replied that the group engages in research
and physical improvisation work. All of the co‐creators are encouraged, in
Matthew’s words, to “think dramaturgically.” This means ensemble members are
responding to artistic and inspirational source materials, while exploring the
expression of their responses through movement, music, and vocal work. His
anecdotes illustrated the skill, dedication, and precision collectively created theatre
requires in order to manifest.
The second themed panel discussion, Intersections: Where Art, Science, and
Society Meet, was held after the matinee performance on April 14 and moderated by
Alison Bowie. The panel featured Meghan Little, a member of the UMass
Permaculture Initiative, and Beyond the Horizon artists Daniel, Adewunmi, and
Brianna. To frame the conversation, Alison posed the same question to all of the
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panelists: What is sustainability and how does it influence your work? Meghan
Little described sustainability as a theory and a practice. The UMass Permiculture
Initiative takes grass lawns on campus and transforms them into sustainable and
ecological permaculture gardens. She mentioned that the gardens are created with
soil that is layered with recycled cardboard and compost from the campus dinning
halls. These edible landscapes in turn supply the dinning halls with fresh herbs and
vegetables. Through her work with permaculture, Meghan strives to help
communities discover how they can “rejuvenate, and not just deplete our
environmental resources.” The Permaculture Initiative, according to Meghan, offers
opportunities for student volunteers to tend to and construct the gardens while
learning about renewable and responsible food production.
Daniel addressed the question by describing performance as an
unsustainable act. For him, performance’s ephemeral nature cannot sustain itself
and by necessity it ends up disappearing. Daniel’s observation echoed Peggy
Phelan’s notion that performance “becomes itself through disappearance” (146). If
the performance act itself cannot be sustained, the question remains: What parts of
theatre can be made more sustainable? Attempts to make “green” theatre, or more
environmentally responsible theatre through sustainable production practices, are
catching on in the professional field. In addition to reusing, recycling, and reselling
production materials, theatres are looking to make their spaces more
sustainable. Some theater buildings, including Wild Project and the Center for
Performance Research, both in New York City, take pride in being certified
sustainable by environmental organizations like the Leadership in Energy and
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Environmental Design (LEED). LEED evaluates the water efficiency, energy
efficiency, indoor atmosphere quality of theaters and other buildings, and takes into
consideration recycling practices as part of its certification process.
Daniel acknowledged the inherent wastefulness of performance citing the
“incredible amount of debris” that gets built for one show only to be discarded. He
saw this unsustainability as an issue theatre needed to more actively address. In the
developmental stages of Beyond the Horizon, he wondered how waste could be
repurposed on stage and therefore pursued using recycled goods in his devised
piece. In the work Daniel directed, To whom it may concern, five hundred plastic
bottles littered the stage. The image of the bottles on the floor was incredibly
striking and vivid. We are used to putting our trash in bins, taking those bins to the
curb, and returning later to find the trash has “magically” disappeared. By putting
the bottles on stage, Daniel and his ensemble asked audiences to confront the waste
it participates in producing. That waste, in reality, does not vanish as readily as
performance does.
The discussion then turned to the role of theatre and how it fits into larger
ideas of society and ecology. Daniel noted that in devised theatre “ecology is at root
of what we do.” He went on to elaborate about how devised theatre invites an
ecological relationship between ensemble members and between an ensemble and
the community for which it performs. Devised theatre speaks to communities,
Daniel asserted, by addressing local or immediate social concerns through personal
artistic responses.
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Play Reading
During the second week of the Beyond the Horizon performances, the reading
of Caridad Svich’s The Way of Water was presented at Food for Though Books in
Amerhst on April 10. Directed by Dawn Monique Williams, the reading featured
Erin Wholley as Rosalie, Joshua Mauro as Jimmy, Jimmy Vidal as Yuki, with Dawn
reading the part of Neva. This reading marked one of the very first in the national
and international The Way of Water: 2012 Reading Scheme, which included the
participation of over thirty theaters.
The reading was presented to an intimate but engaged crowd, which
included students, faculty, community members, and the director of Pioneer Valley
Climate Action, a local organization dedicated to working toward sustainability and
a solution to our climate crisis. Though the turnout for the reading was smaller than
I hoped, dramaturgs at UMass should continue to develop a relationship with Food
for Thought Books and other public venues in the local community. To more fully
engage community members and showcase their programing, UMass dramaturgs
must continue to reach out, beyond the walls of the university.
Capturing the Ephemeral: Scripting Devised Theatre
During the rehearsal and production processes of all three devised works,
Nightingale, To whom it may concern, and What Have We Learned were recorded in
the form of play scripts arranged by the dramaturgs of each ensemble. During the
rehearsal process, the scripts served as a mode of communication between the
designers and the devising teams as the plays were being developed. The scripts
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were also a working tool for performers and stage management, a blueprint for
what would happen during the performances. The strategy in their construction
was to convey information to the full production team internally. They became a
kind of roadmap to performance, bumpy at first, but smoothed with each layer of
revision. A certain short‐hand developed in these scripts for reasons of practicality.
For example, in Nightingale, the trickster characters put on a shadow puppet show
on stage. The script listed the beats of the shadow show numerically and without
elaboration: “1. an egg appears and breaks open / 2. a bird appears from the egg”
and so on (See Appendix A). The ensemble, fully aware of the nuances of the shadow
show since they helped create it, needed only the minimum information. Adewumni
noted that she and Carol were focused on creating a script mainly for those “in the
booth,” who needed to call and run the show.
In crafting a script for archival purposes, the dramaturgs and I went back to
our production drafts to try to capture more fully through language the essence of
our pieces, the spirit of the actions, and the intentions of the co‐creators in our final
archival scripts for Nightingale, To whom it may concern, and What Have We Learned
(See appendices B, C, and D). A balance must be struck however, between making a
script accessible and coherent and leaving the language open enough to invite future
artistic interpretation. Dramaturgs, in creating a script, become the frame through
which the memory of the show and the intentions of the creators are filtered. In the
devising process, the dramatug must capture in written words a culmination of both
process and performance. This is no easy task. Diana Taylor posits, “A cry or a
Brechtian gestus might find no adequate verbal description, for these expressions
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are not reducible or posterior to language. The challenge is not to ‘translate’ from an
embodied expression into a linguistic one or vice versa, but to recognize the
strengths and limitations of each system” (32). Working within these limitations, the
dramaturg must draw upon his or her creativity in finding ways to capture the
essence of performance using the materials of the archive.
One unique challenge Alison faced while scripting To whom it may concern,
became finding a way to describe moments in the performance that varied night to
night. During one section of the show, performers picked out bottles at random that
had been dumped on the floor and read aloud the messages they contained. With
more than forty different possible messages, and no set order as to how many might
be read, Alison listed twenty possibilities in the body of her script and included a list
of the rest in an appendix.
For Alison, the appendix served as a record of her group’s performance
material, but also a place to encourage further invention and devising from any
ensemble looking to perform the script again. She believes that future performers
who pick up the script should add more messages, or exclusively use their own in
subsequent performances. For Alison, the devising process shouldn’t end with her
own ensemble’s work, and though the script was a result of her group’s artistic
explorations, she maintains, “If anyone were to do this again, they should feel
ownership.”
A script can also become a site for moments created by the ensemble that
might not have been fully realized in performance. For example, the performance of
To whom it may concern ended with all the performers in animal masks clearing the
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stage of the bottles spilled at the top of the show. This was a modified ending
included to accommodate the festival format specific to the UMass production.
Originally, the bottles were to be left on stage at the play’s end. Due to the piece’s
positioning in the middle of the festival, and the need for a clean stage for the
following piece, the ending was changed. Wishing to capture the original intention
of the ending, Alison did not change the script to reflect the staging. In the archival
script, she writes, “All the animals are gone. The wasteland is deserted” (See
appendix C).
Devising processes can lead to a greater sense of ownership of the theatrical
work across an ensemble, but does that co‐ownership translate into shared
authorship? Pig Iron, on the advent of their first published anthology of works,
recently had to consider how to credit their material. In our interview, Quinn
Bauriedel said the scripts are listed as created by Pig Iron Theatre Company. This
collective recognition also resulted in the collective sharing of the profits for the
book across the company. He noted that this equal ownership has the potential to
anger co‐creators who might feel like they contributed more to the creation of the
scripts. Quinn insisted that an ensemble must work to establish an “ethical
relationship to rights” when setting out to publish works.
In creating our scripts, the Beyond the Horizon dramaturgs also had to make a
choice about how to attribute credit for the creation of the pieces. I recognized each
ensemble member as jointly authoring the piece. Any interpretive choices I made in
describing the non‐verbal action or the essence of Nightingale were directly
influenced by conversations with my group during the rehearsal process, in addition
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to what I witnessed in performances. Alison also listed all of her ensemble members
as creators, but created separate lines for Daniel and herself. In the archival script
for To whom it may concern, the script is listed as “written by” Alison and the
“original production directed by” Daniel. Adewunmi did not list names at all. At the
beginning of the project, Adewunmi’s ensemble adopted a collective name, “Team
CarWunmi.” This conflation of Carol and Adewunmi’s names signaled the merging
of minds and a spirit of unity, which was gladly adopted by the rest of their
ensemble. Adewunmi used this team name as the author of her script.
Many devising troupes agree that the “script‐oriented” focus of producing
organizations puts devised work at a disadvantage since scripts may not be the best
mode of communicating the full representation a show, especially a show that
contains a great deal of spectacle or a specific physical vocabulary (Sobeck
61). Getting a producer to a live performance of the work, or submitting a DVD
recording of performance is often preferable. For Beyond the Horizon, I collaborated
with members of the UMass Film Club to record and edit a recorded version of the
festival for archival purposes. However, when the goal of a devised piece turns to
repeatability, that is, the ability for the show to have an afterlife in the hands of
another company, scripting a performance is useful. While a video recording would
provide a record of one way to perform the show, it would be limiting to any
company wishing to perform the show with their own artistic interpretation. In the
devising process, the dramaturg struggles to sustain the ephemeral performance
and capture the repertoire through archival materials. However, the archive is not
necessarily stable. According to Taylor, the archive does not “resist change, “ and
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the value and interpretation of those archival materials change depending upon
who is looking at them (19).
When scripting devised performance, it becomes up to the team, including
the dramaturg, to determine what ideas, design elements were just specific to their
production and which are essential to the storytelling. Central questions for the
dramaturg include, “How does one leave a script open enough to avoid becoming
proscriptive, while making it specific enough so someone outside of the creation
process could make sense of it?” and “How do you capture the essence and spirit of a
piece in the form of a script or performance score?” The scripts in the appendices to
this thesis mark the attempts of the Beyond the Horizon dramaturgs to answer these
questions in practice.
Process Reflection: Dual Roles
Throughout the process, I found my role as curator and my role as dramaturg
following similar trajectories. In both instances, I was asked to be a co‐creator while
simultaneously taking into consideration the work as a whole, whether it was the
piece, Nightingale, or the shape of the entire festival. What Turner and Behrndt call
the dramaturg’s “curious balance of intimacy and distance” was most successfully
realized in my work when I was asking questions as well as offering solutions
during both the devising and curation processes (181). As much a co‐creator as
facilitator, I was responsible for creating a space for creativity and discovery to flow
in both roles.
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I approached my curator role and the responsibility of overseeing the entire
festival in much the same way as I approached devising within my ensemble: in the
spirit of collaborative creation. Both processes began with assembling a team of
collaborators, starting with the selection and pairing of the director and dramaturgs.
This process repeated itself as I helped facilitate auditions and shape ensembles.
Though I had input into the creation of the ensemble I selected with Brianna, I also
had an eye on balancing the casting needs of the other two teams. As a curator, and
later as a dramaturg, I presented a theme to collaborators to respond to and flesh
out artistically. Each process involved asking questions of the work being generated
and facilitating the exploration of ideas while allowing time for creative play.
My dramaturgical sensibility played an important role as I navigated
overseeing the collaborative creation of three new plays. In a playwright‐based new
play development process, a dramaturg will work to establish a relationship of trust
with the writer. A skillful dramaturg will allow the writer to control feedback
sessions and remember that a dramaturg’s function is not to rewrite the play.
Instead, the dramaturg should ask questions of the work and respond to what the
playwright has created. I treated the ensembles as writers creating new work. This
meant I asked and answered questions about the work as it developed and offered
my notes. I also respected the varying artistic processes of the teams without being
proscriptive about the work generated or imposing my will.
Though I was in a power position as curator, I was not interested in
exercising any hierarchical might. Through my work on this project, I learned that
devised theatre asks for a different kind of curatorial leader. It asks for one that is
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sensitive to the varying and idiosyncratic methods of creative ensembles. It asks for
one who is patient with what can be an unwieldy, circuitous, and frustrating
process. It asks for one who is not afraid to try out new artistic ideas and fail, or let
others try their ideas and fail. It reminds us that in failure there is knowledge to be
gained. It is not for the risk averse.
This devising process asked me, as an artist, to trust and listen to my own
creative instincts, while balancing the needs and input of my fellow collaborators.
This was perhaps the hardest task. My training as a dramaturg has taught me to
advocate intelligently and fiercely for my opinions, but also to be ready to let a
director take those opinions or leave them. Acting as an artistic instigator, I was
constantly challenged to fully own my empowered voice in the process, while also
remaining receptive and open to the ideas of the creative team. I had to be careful
that in managing the requests of others, that the good of the whole festival stayed
foremost in my mind. As a dramaturg in my own piece that freedom and
responsibility to play an active role in creation through dialogue continued.
Though Brianna and I lead rehearsals, I was pleasantly surprised at how
much the entire group contributed to creating and outlining the story. I was unsure,
both at the outset and during the process, how exactly our six different points of
view would magically coalesce to create one story. I discovered there is a moment
in the devising process when leadership is essential to shape the final story. In my
interview with Quinn Bauriedel, he described this moment as the “hinge.”
According to him, this is the moment when decisions are made, and the process is
more directly lead by one or two members of the ensemble, typically the director
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and writer. He noted that “everything after the hinge changes” as the writer and
director create a play map, arrange content, and establish the play’s arch. This idea
of a “hinge” did not seem unusual. As Turner and Behrndt suggest, “this seemingly
free and open‐ended [devising] process might require an even stronger sense of
structural organization and overview than a production of a conventional play
would demand” and one could see how the director and writer might establish that
organization (171). For my ensemble the “hinge” was worked out collectively.
Together we mapped the play, blending our structural ideas together, while
rearranging scenes on index cards. Brianna and I guided this story mapping session,
but the work and decisions were shared.
A moment did arise after the play arch was completed in which Brianna and I
sought to polish what the ensemble had created. After the design run, when the
performers were focused on their roles, Brianna and I began editing our existing
text without asking the whole group to participate in rewrites. Though we took the
lead in polishing the script, this in no way diminished the collaborative devising
process. The “hinge” serves important functions in a devising model, including
moving the play process forward (particularly if there is a production date looming
as a fixed deadline) and establishing the shape and story of the play. The “hinge”
needn’t hinge on the director and writer (or dramaturg). As we discovered, the
“hinge” can be comprised of the joint efforts of the whole ensemble.
As a curator and devising dramaturg, I discovered that introducing
experiential learning opportunities, and not just archival materials, into rehearsals
is an effective way to enrich the artistic process and get over creative slumps. It was
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my goal for the workshop with Quinn Bauriedel to transmit embodied knowledge of
devising techniques to the entire Beyond the Horizon team. This group endeavor
was also useful in bonding the newly formed ensembles. In the process of working
on Nightingale, Brianna and I took the cast on a field trip in preparation for the
development of our shadow puppet show. We traveled to the Eric Carle museum to
watch Fjords, a multimedia show by the Chicago‐based contemporary shadow
puppetry performance group, Manual Cinema, in collaboration with Chicago Q
Ensemble. Fjords, based on the poetry of Zachary Schomburg, utilized live shadow
puppetry, interaction between actors and puppets, video projection, and slide
projection. Our ensemble was able to talk to members of Manuel Cinema after the
show, look at the puppets, and ask questions. This experiential research offered
exciting inspiration as we set out to create our own shadow show. It also
rejuvenated the group, which helped us get past some of the artistic walls and
creative fatigue we had been encountering in rehearsals.
Finally, in both my role as curator and dramaturg, I was responsible for
shaping and considering theatrical structure both in terms of the entire festival and
of Nightingale. I structured the festival as three separate theatrical responses to the
Deans’ Theme both for practical and dramaturgical reasons. Knowing the rehearsal
process with the full ensembles would be limited to six weeks, dividing the festival
into three smaller more manageable pieces seemed most desirable. Dramaturgically,
I was interested in presenting three pieces as one evening of theatre collage‐style to
mirror the multiple points of view surrounding our relationship to the natural world
in light of repeated human‐made disasters. There isn’t one way to repair the
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destruction we cause or one answer (artistic or otherwise) to the question of how
we find a way to reconnect to nature. The fragmented stories, put in conversation
with each other, invited the audience to draw connections and share in the
dramaturgical process of decoding our interactions with the world around us.
Nightingale offered similar structural questions. My ensemble’s piece
contained two worlds on stage: the natural world of the trickster characters and the
glossy world of the toxic beauty queen. These characters were all part of the same
story, yet never interacted with each other on stage. These seemingly separate
worlds were structured to interrogate the idea that human beings are somehow
outside of nature, while simultaneously exploring the interconnectivity of all life on
this planet.
Where my roles as the curator and devising dramaturg trajectories deviated,
were also the sites of my biggest challenges. The largest obstacle I faced as a curator
was finding a way to make a devised theatre‐making process work within the
limited confines of a traditional production model practiced at UMass. Though I had
control over the shape and structure of the festival, it was bound to a production
calendar and rehearsal model built for script‐based theatre. The devising process
and the department’s model for producing shows were at odds and their interface
during the project required flexibility and patience for all those involved.
This example is reflected in the professional theatre realm, which is also
mostly built to accommodate a text‐based playwright‐centered process of
development and production. I learned through this process that the
dramaturg/curator must be constantly vigilant when it comes to questioning the
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standard operating procedures of theatres, particularly if those procedures do not
serve the project at hand. Bruce Barton suggests that “the inherent curiosity, self‐
critique, and creative unrest that characterize much of…[devised] theatre stand as
undeniable reminders to constantly reconsider the normalized activities,
categorizations, and institutional structures that define our vocation” (“Navigating
Turbulence” 116). The dramaturg, also curious, self‐reflective, and restlessly
inquisitive, can act as a force to question the theatrical norm. The dramaturg‐as‐
instigator must do more than reconsider theatre‐making processes and structures,
however. He or she must be proactive in anticipating sites of potential tension
between the producing institution and the devising process, while outlining clear
expectations for those involved. Looking back, I would have made more of an effort
in the fall of 2011 to reach out to each member of the production team individually
to talk about the devising process and address expectations on both sides before the
project got under way. The dramaturg can help demystify the devising process and
work with the institution to design models that can better serve this kind of theatre.
This requires building strong working relationships with producers, designers, and
production team members who might feel uncomfortable with unfamiliar theatre‐
making models.
When designing devising models, conversations surrounding development
and production timelines offer an important starting place for discussion. In
retrospect, one change I would have made to the Beyond the Horizon process would
be the timeline of the ensembles’ rehearsals. I delayed the casting of the show after
being told that the Beyond the Horizon team would have a voice in casting
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negotiations with the director of Midsummer. Knowing now that the department
had no intention of facilitating a conversation about casting between the leaders of
the two spring shows, I would have cast the festival in the fall. This decision would
have given ensembles more time to develop work that could have culminated in an
in‐progress showing before being mounted as part of the season in the spring
semester. A public showing of a work in progress, much like a public play reading of
a script, can offer important insights to the creative team.
As I learned in the Beyond the Horizon process, change isn’t easy and
institutional habits die hard. A big challenge I faced was navigating the negative
attitudes of those in the department who were overtly or subtly dismissive of our
devising model or disrespectful to our artistic process. These attitudes challenged
me to assert my creative voice and trust in my artistic instincts. I knew the festival
was an informative experimental process, as well as a useful pedagogical tool that
offered students a chance to find their artistic voices as co‐creators. The Beyond the
Horizon festival of devised works was in important step for the UMass Theater
Department in opening itself up to alternative play‐making models as part of
educating the next generation of theatre leaders.
I was floored by the overwhelming positive response from the student
ensemble members about the value of the devising models in which they
participated. When I asked if they would ever want to work this way again in the
future, students’ responses included “Yes, 100%. Or more like 150%,” “Yes...it was a
learning process like no other,” and “Yes! It's so different from traditional theater
but it's so organic, so unpredictable...very exciting!” Students are hungry to take an
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active role in creating and shaping the art they make. As a result of the festival,
there have been conversations in the department about continuing to stage and
support devised theatre at UMass. I can only hope that the work I have instigated
and realized, through the help of my collaborators, will further devising
opportunities for students in the future.
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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
The process of designing, curating and devising, during the Beyond the
Horizon festival was filled with successes, challenges, and set the stage for future
investigations of the emerging role of the dramaturg in devised theatre. It was my
goal to forge a space where I could lead creatively and collaboratively while
empowering my fellow co‐creators to chart their own devising processes within
their ensembles. Though that goal was realized with difficulty, the larger question
of how a devised theatre model might be integrated within more traditional theatre
structures loomed large at the end of the project. Advocating for the validity, worth,
and artistic merit of devised theatre, while crafting working conditions in which
such a theatre model could thrive, were my largest tasks as curator. More work
must be done to find ways to support alternative methods of play‐making both
outside and inside traditional theatre models. This project has shaped my ideas
about how the dramaturg‐as‐artistic‐instigator, armed with an intimate knowledge
of devising methods and new play development processes, a command of navigating
the archive and the repertoire, and a collaborative spirit, can lead the way.
Dramaturg as Artistic Instigator
The dramaturg‐as‐artistic‐instigator is in an excellent position to facilitate
change by daring to question traditional new play development practices and
advocating for expanded models, including devised theatre practices, which offer an
empowered position for the dramaturg and all co‐creators involved. Dramaturgy is
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often shared across ensemble members in devising processes, and the inclusion of a
named “dramaturg” in the rehearsal room does not threaten that practice. The
dramaturg can only serve to enrich, deepen, and enliven the collective
dramaturgical discussions. The presence of a dramaturg as an “explicit function”
offers the team someone who is focused on structure and composition in a “living
process” in which form and content develop as the process unfolds (Turner and
Behrndt 170). In rehearsal, the devising dramaturg acts as a surveyor, who
observes and maps the theatrical territory. He or she makes note of exciting
discoveries, wayward research paths, and forks in the artistic road. The dramaturg
can also organize and translate the lay of the land into archival materials that can be
accessed and used later. In an organic and shifting process, the dramaturg can
identify artistic landmarks to return to and viable narrative roads to explore. In
addition to creating and adding to an ever‐expanding map of the process, the
dramaturg is also adding to the landscape by planting conceptual seeds and both
leading and participating in exercises to generate content with fellow co‐creators in
the rehearsal room.
The dramaturg‐as‐artistic‐instigator can play an important role in acting as
an advocate for devised theatre outside of rehearsal. Currently, new play
development dramaturgs and literary managers operate as gateways between
playwrights and regional institutional theaters. New plays being developed at such
theaters usually move through some type of trajectory that includes script
reading(s), workshop(s), and (possibly) a full production. This model, while useful
for playwright‐centered play development, cuts out devising at the ground level by
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privileging the script as step one to production. Many devising ensembles believe
their work doesn’t translate well to the page, particularly if they employ spectacle or
specific movement or dance vocabularies on stage. Steven Sapp of the ensemble
Universes proclaims the importance of visual representation for advancing
development opportunities for devised work, “In terms of not having a script, we
don’t have one. We have stuff . . . it’s more about the live performance, if we can get
people to come see us live . . . kinda get a sense of what’s working or where we’re
going, but in terms of having a ‘script’ script, it takes a while for us to even hold one.”
(Sobeck 61).
Institutional theaters and development centers have a myriad of programs to
support the new work of playwrights that could be modified or restructured by a
dramaturg to address the development needs of devising ensembles. Many
dramaturgs produce new play reading festivals at theaters as a way for playwrights
to develop their work through a public showing. While script readings might be less
useful for devising ensembles, a dramaturg might propose and design a festival of
minimally staged in‐progress workshop showings of devised work. Such festivals
could serve as a more appropriate development tool for devising ensembles looking
to test their work in front of spectators. This sort of festival would make devised
work visible to audiences and give them a chance to experience the work in a low‐
risk, low‐cost setting. It would also give devisers an opportunity to present their
work to potential funders or producers who may want to invest in the project.
During the American Voices New Play Institute convening on devised work,
devising artists identified the most important element to their work was “simply
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time: time to sit with an idea, time to be together (if the work is ensemble‐based),
time to explore” (Sobeck 56). As I discovered curating Beyond the Horizon, devised
work needs a flexible development and production schedule sensitive to the needs
of collective creation. Currently, there are a number of play development
institutions, such as Lark Play Development Center in New York City, that provide
time and space to playwrights to develop their work. Lark, and other development
centers like New Dramatists which currently employ playwright‐centric
development schemes, could open their doors and resources to devisers. A
dramaturg, already skilled at developing relationships with playwrights and with a
finger on the pulse of the work of devising troupes, could forge these new
connections between institutions and artists.
What is also bundled into ensembles’ desire for time to work is inherently a
call for funding. As the adage goes, “time is money,” and theatre artists can’t develop
work if they must spend all their waking hours working to make ends meet.
Dramaturgs at institutional theaters can help alleviate this financial strain by
championing commissions for devising ensembles. This idea is already being tested
at theaters like Center Theatre Group, which allotted nearly “one‐third” of its sixteen
commissions to those making devised work in 2010 (Sobeck 65). In addition to
commissions, residencies and fellowships could also be extended to members of an
ensemble.
Funding a group of artists, rather than just one artist, does present
complexities. With more than one creator in the room, theaters must decide how to
go about paying the group. Also, playwrights, already forced to fight for limited
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resources and funding support, might not look kindly to devising ensembles being
awarded money. This attitude assumes that devisers aren’t writers too.
Fellowships, residencies, and commissions, championed by instigating dramaturgs,
could signal to the theatre community that the process of empowered devising co‐
creators is as legitimate as a script‐based process and worthy of support.
Another course of action for the dramaturg to support devising artists could
include creating and supporting new development models, rather than stretching
pre‐existing development models to fit devising needs. The Network of Ensemble
Theatres (NET) has already laid the groundwork for ensembles to think about how
to empower themselves outside of traditional theatre models. According to NET’s
website, their mission is to “propel ensemble theater practice to the forefront of
American culture and society.” NET connects affiliate members from a wide array of
ensembles and devising‐friendly organizations across America. NET has made great
strides in providing useful resources to ensembles by designing conferences and
festivals for exchanging of ideas, creating professional development programs, and
serving as an online hub for finding funding information and nationwide member
events.
Though NET provides a strong start in the advancement of supporting
ensembles, in the future, perhaps devisers will have a development center building
focused exclusively on the needs of collective ensembles. In such a space, the
dramaturg‐as‐instigator, armed with a knowledge of new play development
practices and devising methodologies, could collaborate with ensembles to create
not a one‐size‐fits‐all development model, but rather a series of options so devisers
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might custom build their experiences. Such development experiences could include
workshops, work‐in‐progress showings, festivals of excerpts from the work of
multiple troupes, creative play sessions, feedback opportunities lead by the
devisers, and meet and greet events with other ensembles. A devising development
center could become a physical hub for devisers to build community by sharing
methods, resources, and support. Devising dramaturgs might flex their grant
writing muscles to bring national and international guests to the center to lead
discussions and workshops.
The devising dramaturg, skilled in dealing with both the repertoire and the
archive, might also work with collective ensembles to find effective or innovate
ways of documenting the work to function as a blueprint for remounting the piece,
as an archival record, or as a submission tool to get produced. Dramaturgs might
explore digital means of recording and compiling the various parts of a performance
through images, drawings, text, and video and laying them out in a virtual
performance score, much like a musical score. Interactive technologies could allow
a reader to visually take in the score, by selecting which “parts” of the storytelling to
view: text, video, music and so on. The website “capzles” offers a free and easy to
use interface which allows users to storyboard a play in a series of moments.
Clicking on a moment square allows the user to access the text, images, and video
contained in that moment or scene. These moments are sequenced in a
timeline. This takes the dramaturgical index card outline I created for Nightingale to
the next level by allowing a dramaturg to bundle different parts of the performance
score (text, video, music) together in one moment for easy multimedia access. This
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one example is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how devised theatre might find
a more full expression outside of performance.
The insufficiency of a script to adequately capture some kinds of devised
performance doesn’t just limit such work from being considered for development at
institutional theaters, it also limits the ability for a completed show to get
produced. The dramaturg/literary manager at institutional theaters could open the
door to devising ensembles by designing and implementing new play submission
policies that acknowledge diverse play‐making models. This would require the
dramaturg to go beyond waiting for a script to arrive from an agent and venture out
of the office and into the community to build relationships with devising ensembles
whose work is vivid, transformative, and worthy of consideration. New policies
might also expand what submission materials a literary office accepts, particularly
when dealing with devised work. Such materials might include accepting DVD
recordings, a portfolio of multimedia materials, or taking a trip to see a group’s
performances live.
These proposed changes will present challenges to the traditional theatre
model and resistance from some, but the dramaturg‐as‐artistic‐instigator is ready to
design, implement, test, and redesign new programs in support of devised work. Liz
Engelman points out that the job of the dramaturg is to “constantly be dramaturging
our own theatre’s programing . . . Ideas have a life span. New programs become old”
(95). To keep programs fresh and to acknowledge the shifting theatrical landscape
that includes devised theatre, the dramaturg‐as‐artistic‐instigator has in his or her
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tool kit passion, persistence, generosity, patience, and a ear open to ensemble artists
and those working within institutions.
The dramaturg can play an important role advocating for devised work
internally at institutional theaters, but he or she must also help educate audiences
about this process of theatre‐making. During the Beyond the Horizon festival, I used
post‐show discussions as opportunities to inform audience members about the
devising process. While the talks were stimulating, they only impacted a limited
section of our audience. My desire to find a way to reach out to more audience
members prompted me to consider other methods I might employ in the future.
In our interview, Quinn Bauriedel acknowledged the need for devisers and
theaters “to teach” audiences about devised work which might seem foreign to them
at first. A few ways Pig Iron has addressed this is through smart marketing which
sets up audience expectations and by reaching out to the same community in order
to build a fan base. Quinn noted, “the more they see, the more they speak our
language.” Devising, through its use of collage, montage, and multiple points of view,
often doesn’t look or sound like traditional plays following a two act structure.
Devised work is often fragmented, multimedia driven, and non‐linear and expects a
different level of interaction from audiences. They are often expected to think
dramaturgically, draw their own interpretive connections, and make meaning from
what they are presented. As a bridge to the audience, the dramaturg is responsible
for helping the audience “speak the language” of a devising troupe.
It has been a conversation in the field for a long time that audiences are aging
and changes must be made to harness the next generation of theatre‐goers.
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Promoting and presenting the process and the artists involved in devised theatre as
much as individual shows could help groups generate an audience following that
feels personally invested in the ensemble. This might mean staging encounters
between audiences and artists that break with the traditional pedagogical talkback
models and move the conversation to a bar, a rooftop, or a dance party.
“Collaborative” is a term used often to describe the process of all kinds of
play‐making models. In an ideal devising situation, all members are equal co‐
creators in the artistic process, though in practice this may seldom be the case. In a
conversation with Andy Paris of Tectonic Theatre Project, he remarked that people
always ask him how to create an egalitarian ensemble. His answer, he said, remains
the same, “I don’t know, I’ve never seen it happen.” Anne Bogart and Tina Landau
ask artists to pause and reconsider if the process they engage in can truly be called
collaborative. They write:
Can the artistic process be collaborative? Can a group of strong‐minded individuals together ask what the play or project wants, rather than depending upon the hierarchical domination of one person? Of course a project needs structure and a sense of direction but can the leader aim for discovery rather than staging a replica of what s/he has decided beforehand? Can we resist proclaiming, “what it is” long enough to authentically ask: “What is it?” (18).
My reply is yes. The artistic process is collaborative. It is teeming with
transformative potential and discovery. While curating and shaping the Beyond the
Horizon festival, it was my goal to allow the creative process to unfold organically
and rhizomatically across and within the three ensembles. Though I made decisions
regarding structure and staged the initial encounters between dramaturgs and
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directors within the teams, I sought to free the process of the hierarchical
domination of traditional theatre models by empowering my collaborators at each
stage of the process and respecting their ensembles’ multiple visions. To lead the
project in this way was artistically risky. I had to rely on the talent and creativity of
my fellow co‐creators as we set out to discover what the project wanted to be and
how it would find its full expression. It also proved to be incredibly thrilling,
fulfilling, and rewarding.
The dramaturg‐as‐artistic‐instigator is uniquely positioned to access the
collaborative potential of the artistic process and lead thoughtfully through his or
her questioning spirit. Questions, as Michael Bigelow Dixon maintains, are “the most
dignified path to revelation because they honor difference, the other, the past, and
our search for shared understanding of the collaborative process” (94). Questioning
is an active process and an important tool in the hands of an artistic instigator who
is skilled enough to innovate, ask, listen, lean in, share ideas in the spirit of artistic
generosity, actively co‐create, and thus, collaborate. This work requires leaders
who risk boldly and use their power to empower others. It suggests that through
mutual respect and questioning, we might arrive collectively at the artistic answers
we seek, and uncover answers we never could have imagined on our own.
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APPENDIX A
NIGHTINGALE PRODUCTION SCRIPT
NIGHTINGALE
By Samantha Creed, Megan McClain, Annelise Neilson, Brianna Sloane, Katrina Turner, and Devyn Yurko
Moment ‐ Birth (one bird can break the sky)
(In the darkness, the sound of waves. The waves fade out and are replaced by the breath of the actors. As the light of dawn comes up, the chorus begins to sing.)
CHORUS/TRICKSTERS
There was a strange stillness There was a strange stillness The birds where had they gone? The people had done it to themselves. (The chorus sings in rounds, walking around the bird as it slowly begins to hatch. One by one, each chorus member stops singing, physically transforms into a trickster figure, and watches the bird. They are playful scavengers, childlike, and of the earth. Adorned with the scraps of a polluted world, they create whatever they need with whatever they can find. They are storytellers. The song dies out as each trickster leaves the circle. They hide and watch. The bird fully emerges and delivers her broken warning.)
BIRD
If had song sing morning sing evening over land sing warning sing danger sing love brother sister over land
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Moment ‐ I asked for water, and she gave me gasoline
(A Hazmat Suit enters which causes the tricksters to scatter. The Hazmat Suit surveys the situation, making her way tentatively to the bird. Trust and danger are weighed on both sides. The bird overcomes her fear and stretches toward the Hazmat Suit. Finally, their hands touch. Blackout. In the darkness we hear an isolated thundering wave crash. Then we hear the bird sing)
BIRD
I asked for water and she gave me gasoline.
(Lights up. The Hazmat Suit has taken the bird to a confined space above the stage and is ready to clip its wings. The following phrases repeat and overlap while the bird and Hazmat Suit struggle in a deconstructed tango.)
BIRD
I asked for water, and she gave me gasoline
HAZMAT BIRD
Why you wanna fly bird?
The world’s a wingspan wide. Gasoline
Why you wanna fly bird?
The world’s a wingspan wide. Gaso‐Gasoline
If you’d only understand, dear, we’ll only clip your pride.
(The Hazmat Suit strips the bird of her wings. Hazmat Suit leaves her in a confined space. The lights fade out on the bird as they come up on the tricksters.)
(The tricksters enter and discover each other. They create, play, and dissolve a game. They become bored. They discover a feather from the bird. They interrogate the object with joy. ) (Suddenly, an air raid siren scares them away and signals the entrance of the Toxic Beauty Queen. She enters grandly and with poise in a 60’s inspired dress. The air raid dies down. In a pool of light, she speaks as though addressing a camera. A canned 60’s smooth jazz song underscores her monologue.)
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Moment ‐ Storytime with the Toxic Beauty Queen
TOXIC BEAUTY QUEEN
(The Beauty Queen walks down the grand staircase, waving and smiling.)
Once upon a time, there was a town in the heart of Suburbia where people lived in harmony. Where there was stillness, there was safety. A “control of nature” ‐ progress! Every piece existed for the innovative use of man. On the mornings once marred with the drone of insects and undesirable organisms there was now no sound. Only peace and quiet lay over the fields and woods and marsh. The people had done it themselves! The end. Oh! It’s almost time for our regularly scheduled eradication blast! Our brave sterilization pilots drop chemical bombs from the sky (She salutes) – why, you ask? To help us control nasty non‐approved natural matter and undesirable organisms, of course! Do you remember what to do to help our chemical friends work their magic, boys and girls?
Start every morning by washing your face with your officially issued protectant cream. It’s like a raincoat for your face! Now, don’t fuss‐ washing behind your ears can be so much fun! Nobody thinks itchy chemical burns are fun—so you must wash, and you must never, ever play in sludge or slurry.
When you hear the alarm for a scheduled blast, stop and find a place to hide. Don’t look for home, just go right to any building that’s nearby. There may not always be an adult around to help but you know what to do! You can make a game of it. Close your eyes and breathe shallowly. Imagine you’re on a deep sea dive! Weeeee!
It’s so easy to remember the rules‐ Hygiene, Avoidance and Caution or “Hack” for short! All Clear! (The Toxic Beauty Queen exits.)
Moment ‐ Voice of Nature
(Tricksters enter. They make fun of the Queen, mocking her gestures. They play a game that explores humankind’s excess and destructive relationship toward nature. It ends with them all “dying.”) (Lights up on the bird as she sings from her confinement)
BIRD
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I asked for water...
(Tricksters snap to attention. They begin to clap out a rhythm.)
BIRD
Everything here for the convenience of man They tell only their story Can’t you see it? Can’t you feel it? Once voice cannot make harmony (The Tricksters respond with a percussive dance, then continue clapping.)
BIRD
The road you’ve been traveling is deceptively easy A smooth super highway at the end lies disaster Can’t you see it? Can’t you feel it? Can anyone hear me?
(The Tricksters respond with a percussive dance, then continue clapping.)
BIRD
Can anyone hear me? Find a voice to call ebb and flow
TRICKSTERS (echoing the bird) ebb and flow
BIRD rise and fall
TRICKSTERS (echoing the bird) rise and fall
BIRD Find a voice to crow rise and fall
TRICKSTERS (echoing the bird) rise and fall
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BIRD
ebb and flow
TRICKSTERS(echoing the bird) ebb and flow
BIRD is it only my echo? is it only my—
(The tricksters try to return the bird’s feather to her, but they cannot reach. The sound of the air raid siren scatters them again. The Toxic Beauty Queen enters. Her signature 60’s smooth jazz piece plays under this monologue.)
Moment ‐ Denial is a state of mind
TOXIC BEAUTY QUEEN
(Entering in a pink sweater and apron, like we’ve discovered her in her own kitchen.)
Ladies! Did that latest chemical occurrence disrupt your dinner? Disturb your beauty routine? Shake‐up your party guests? In these trying times it can be difficult to look your best AND keep your home running smoothly. But don’t give up! You play an important role in controlling non‐approved natural matter. And best of all, maintaining one's own cleanliness and the cleanliness of the home keeps the spirits of our sky‐bound sterilizers flying high. (She salutes) And they need your help!
Feeling overwhelmed by such a big job? Take my advice, start your morning right with officially issued cleansing cream. (She mimes applying cleanser to her face.) Applying the cream provides a wonderful calming effect … and it obliterates microscopic pore‐clogging particles and killer germs while reducing chemical scarring! Looking my best helps ME remember I’m doing my part.
When it comes to those bothersome eradication blasts, remember: chemical occurrences benefit the public by providing a higher standard of living! Keep yourself on a schedule. We all know it can be awfully confusing to have to walk away right in the middle of a recipe, so don't start the soufflé until after you hear the all clear signal!
Hear the warning siren and little Tommy or Betty are nowhere in sight? Just keep smiling and go ahead with your usual protective measures. They know what to do! Stock your family home shelter with your favorite magazines, cosmetics, food.... and
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water! You can’t live without it. In extreme emergency, thirsty people should not be denied water, even if it’s been contaminated.
How do I keep myself so cheery, you ask? I stock up on great tasting sugar‐coated half‐ truths! Whenever anxiety sets in, I just savor the sweetness of a sugar‐coated half‐truth, which maintains my sunny disposition. These days, Chemical Occurrences can sometimes happen without warning. But don’t panic and DON’T listen to gossip‐ experts agree that increased levels today mean a better tomorrow! After chemical events, make sure you waft, like so. If you feel a burning sensation, just wait a few moments for it to pass. You see? You can maintain control if you know what to do. (Sound of oven timer “ding!”)
Oh! That’s my soufflé! Excuse me. All Clear!
(She exits.)
Moment ‐ Beginnings are apt to be shadowy
(Lights up on the bird. The recorded Voice of Nature song begins to play. Tricksters enter and greet her. They go grab their puppet pieces and set up a screen. They snap on a clip light, and all other lights go out as they begin their shadow puppet show. The bird sings over the music.) Shadow play
1. Egg arrives 2. Egg hatches bird 3. Egg hatches trickster 1 4. Trickster 1 pulls Trickster 2 from the earth, They pull Trickster 3 from ground 5. they make a trickster gesture and exit 6. Bird flies 7. Bird close up: preening 8. Human enters, feeds bird, pets bird, cages bird 9. Bird trapped in cage 10. Tricksters plan 11. Tricksters free bird 12. Bird spreads big wings 13. Feather falls slowly into outstretched hands
(Tricksters come out from behind screen. Air raid siren sounds. Tricksters scramble to clear their puppet show pieces.)
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Moment ‐ War on Undesirable Organisms
(Toxic Beauty Queen enters. She marches on like a soldier pin‐up, dressed in a provocative beach‐wrap. She arrives in place a blows a sexy kiss to the audience. Her 60’s music plays.)
TOXIC BEAUTY QUEEN
Fellas, we’re fighting a WAR against non‐approved living matter! We have seen a sharp increase of undesirable organisms – but experts are working hard to make sure they’re contained and controlled. I know you’re eager to get in there and FIGHT, to protect our way of life! Volunteer today to fly an eradication bomber airplane and decimate this unregulated infestation. Eradication blasts have been increased to kill off this invasion. Chemical bombs are being dropped from the sky in record numbers, all over‐ and you can help! Don’t listen to rumors that say prospects are grim! Measure your courage and never go outside without your officially approved protective gear. If you keep a level head, you will make it home without worries of skin poisoning, hair loss or asphyxiation!
Keep a sharp eye out for undesirable organisms. Report any strange or unidentified living matter you spot. In times of emergency, be a man. When danger strikes, don't join the “run for the hills” fraternity! Don’t turn and bolt with your tail between your legs! The day we desert our duties is the day we fail. I’m proud to stand behind you! I salute you! And I’ll be waiting for you to come home!
(She is about to say “All Clear” but all that comes out of her mouth is an air raid. She tries again. The siren sounds again. She discovers it only stops when she closes her mouth. After a beat she tries to open her mouth again and the siren sounds. Three people in hazmat suits rush out to respond. She closes her mouth and the sound stops. A 1960’s song, Up and Down, blasts over the speakers. The hazmat suits come off revealing women in beach wear. They dance the dance of denial, which speeds up and breaks down. They rush off leaving the Queen alone. She tries again to speak. It is the siren. She runs off stage in a tantrum.)
Moment ‐ Ascension
(The Voice of Nature song plays with echo and reverb effects. The tricksters enter carrying bundled up wings they have constructed and feathers they have collected. They attach the feathers to the wings. )
TRICKSTER 1 Once...
TRICKSTER 2
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Strange stillness.
TRICKSTER 1 Only silence.
TRICKSTER 3
Control.
TRICKSTER 2 Convenience.
TRICKSTER 1 People destroying. (Beat)
TRICKSTER 1 Voice!
TRICKSTER 3 Broken.
TRICKSTER 2
Beauty. Meaning.
TRICKSTER 3 Harmony.
TRICKSTER 3 Singing sunsets.
TRICKSTER 2 Singing memory.
TRICKSTER 1 Singing eons. (They sense danger and make their way toward the bird. When they reach her confinement, in a ritual fashion the tricksters dress the bird in the wings they have created and gather at her feet. She begins to flap and the tricksters flip the switch on her wings that illuminate them. She freezes displaying her full wingspan. She ascends in a lighting event. Blackout. Sound of crashing waves.) (A single pool of light center stage illuminates feathers falling from the sky in silence. They settle in a pile on stage.)
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Moment ‐ Epilogue
(A Hazmat Suit comes to sweep up the feathers. Lights fade to black).
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APPENDIX B
NIGHTINGALE ARCHIVAL SCRIPT
NIGHTINGALE
By Samantha Creed, Megan McClain, Annelise Neilson, Brianna Sloane, Katrina Turner, and Devyn Yurko
Moment ‐ Birth (one bird can break the sky)
(In the darkness, the sound of waves. The waves fade out and are replaced by the breath of the actors. As the light of dawn comes up, the chorus begins to sing. With them on stage is a bird, not yet hatched.)
CHORUS/TRICKSTERS
There was a strange stillness There was a strange stillness The birds where had they gone? The people had done it to themselves. (The chorus sings in rounds, their ritualistic movements accompanying the slow hatching of the bird. One by one, each chorus member stops singing and physically transforms into a trickster figure. They are playful scavengers, childlike, and of the earth. Adorned with the scraps of a polluted world, they create whatever they need with whatever they can find. They are storytellers. They hide and watch the bird. The bird fully emerges and delivers her broken warning.)
BIRD
If had song sing morning sing evening over land sing warning sing danger sing love brother sister over land
Moment ‐ I asked for water, and she gave me gasoline
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(A Hazmat Suit enters which causes the tricksters to scatter. The Hazmat Suit surveys the situation, making her way tentatively to the bird. Trust and danger are weighed on both sides. The bird overcomes her fear and stretches toward the Hazmat Suit. The Suit grabs the bird’s wrist suddenly. Blackout. In the darkness we hear an isolated thundering wave crash. Then we hear the bird sing)
BIRD
I asked for water and she gave me gasoline.
(Lights up. The Hazmat Suit has taken the bird to a confined space above the stage and is ready to clip its wings. The following phrases repeat and overlap while the bird and Hazmat Suit struggle in a deconstructed tango.)
BIRD
I asked for water, and she gave me gasoline
HAZMAT BIRD
Why you wanna fly bird?
The world’s a wingspan wide. Gasoline
Why you wanna fly bird?
The world’s a wingspan wide. Gaso‐Gasoline
If you’d only understand, dear, we’ll only clip your pride.
(The Hazmat Suit strips the bird of her wings and exits, leaving the bird alone. The lights fade out on the bird as they come up on the tricksters.)
(The tricksters enter and discover each other. They create, play, and dissolve a game. They become bored. They discover a feather from the bird. They interrogate the object with joy. ) (Suddenly, an air raid siren scares them away. The Toxic Beauty Queen enters grandly, waving and smiling in 60’s inspired attire complete with rubber gloves to the sound of canned 60’s smooth jazz. In a pool of light, she speaks as though addressing a camera. The music underscores her monologue.)
Moment ‐ Storytime with the Toxic Beauty Queen
100
TOXIC BEAUTY QUEEN
Once upon a time, there was a town in the heart of Suburbia where people lived in harmony. Where there was stillness, there was safety. A “control of nature.” Progress! Every piece existed for the innovative use of man. On the mornings once marred with the drone of insects and undesirable organisms there was now no sound. Only peace and quiet lay over the fields and woods and marsh. The people had done it themselves! The end. Oh! It’s almost time for our regularly scheduled eradication blast! Our brave sterilization pilots drop chemical bombs from the sky (She salutes) – why, you ask? To help us control nasty non‐approved natural matter and undesirable organisms, of course! Do you remember what to do to help our chemical friends work their magic, boys and girls?
Start every morning by washing your face with your officially issued protectant cream. It’s like a raincoat for your face! Now, don’t fuss‐ washing behind your ears can be so much fun! Nobody thinks itchy chemical burns are fun—so you must wash, and you must never, ever play in sludge or slurry.
When you hear the alarm for a scheduled blast, stop and find a place to hide. Don’t look for home, just go right to any building that’s nearby. There may not always be an adult around to help but you know what to do! You can make a game of it. Close your eyes and breathe shallowly. Imagine you’re on a deep‐sea dive! Weeeee!
It’s so easy to remember the rules‐ Hygiene, Avoidance and Caution or “Hack” for short! All Clear! (The Toxic Beauty Queen exits.)
Moment ‐ Voice of Nature
(Tricksters enter. They make fun of the Queen, mocking her gestures. They play a game that explores humankind’s excess and destructive relationship toward nature. It includes airplane noises and falling bombs. It ends with them all “dying” and splayed motionless on the floor.) (Lights up on the bird as she sings from her confinement)
BIRD (singing)
I asked for water...
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(Tricksters snap to attention. They begin to clap out a rhythm.)
BIRD (singing)
Everything here for the convenience of man They tell only their story Can’t you see it? Can’t you feel it? Once voice cannot make harmony (The Tricksters respond with a percussive dance, then continue clapping.)
BIRD (singing)
The road you’ve been traveling is deceptively, deceptively easy A smooth super highway at the end lies disaster Can’t you see it? Can’t you feel it? Can anyone hear me?
(The Tricksters respond with a percussive dance, then continue clapping.)
BIRD (singing)
Can anyone hear me? Find a voice to call ebb and flow
TRICKSTERS (echoing the bird) ebb and flow
BIRD (singing) rise and fall
TRICKSTERS (echoing the bird) rise and fall
BIRD (singing) Find a voice to crow rise and fall
TRICKSTERS (echoing the bird) rise and fall
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BIRD (singing) ebb and flow
TRICKSTERS (echoing the bird) ebb and flow
BIRD (singing) is it only my echo? is it only my— (The tricksters try to return the bird’s feather to her, but they cannot reach. The sound of the air raid siren scatters them again. The Toxic Beauty Queen enters in a new outfit, but with her same rubber gloves to the tune of her signature 60’s smooth jazz..)
Moment ‐ Denial is a state of mind
TOXIC BEAUTY QUEEN
(Entering in a pink sweater and apron, like we’ve discovered her in her own kitchen.)
Ladies! Did that latest chemical occurrence disrupt your dinner? Disturb your beauty routine? Shake‐up your party guests? In these trying times it can be difficult to look your best AND keep your home running smoothly. But don’t give up! You play an important role in controlling non‐approved natural matter. And best of all, maintaining one's own cleanliness and the cleanliness of the home keeps the spirits of our sky‐bound sterilizers flying high. (She salutes) And they need your help!
Feeling overwhelmed by such a big job? Take my advice, start your morning right with officially issued cleansing cream. (She mimes applying cleanser to her face.) Applying the cream provides a wonderful calming effect … and it obliterates microscopic pore‐clogging particles and killer germs while reducing chemical scarring! Looking my best helps ME remember I’m doing my part.
When it comes to those bothersome eradication blasts, remember: chemical occurrences benefit the public by providing a higher standard of living! Keep yourself on a schedule. We all know it can be awfully confusing to have to walk away right in the middle of a recipe, so don't start the soufflé until after you hear the all clear signal!
Hear the warning siren and little Tommy or Betty are nowhere in sight? Just keep smiling and go ahead with your usual protective measures. They know what to do! Stock your family home shelter with your favorite magazines, cosmetics, food.... and water! You can’t live without it. In extreme emergency, thirsty people should not be denied water, even if it’s been contaminated.
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How do I keep myself so cheery, you ask? I stock up on great tasting sugar‐coated half‐ truths! Whenever anxiety sets in, I just savor the sweetness of a sugar‐coated half‐truth, which maintains my sunny disposition. These days, Chemical Occurrences can sometimes happen without warning. But don’t panic and DON’T listen to gossip‐ experts agree that increased levels today mean a better tomorrow! After chemical events, make sure you waft, like so. If you feel a burning sensation, just wait a few moments for it to pass. You see? You can maintain control if you know what to do. (Sound of oven timer “ding!”)
Oh! That’s my soufflé! Excuse me. All Clear!
(She exits.)
Moment ‐ Beginnings are apt to be shadowy
(Lights up on the bird. A hauntingly, but beautiful a cappella song floats in the space. Tricksters enter and greet the bird. Then, they go grab their puppet pieces and set up a screen. They snap on a clip light, and all other lights go out as they begin their shadow puppet show. It is a wish, a hope, a dream, an origin story, a love letter to the bird. The bird sings over the music.) (Shadow play: It begins with a birth, an egg, shaking with life. It cracks open to reveal a bird. The bird exits the screen as the egg begins to shake again and a Trickster silhouette emerges from it. The trickster plants a seed. From the seed, a hand grows from the earth. The first Trickster pulls the second up and out of the ground. They both reach down as two hands sprout from the bottom of the screen and pull the third Trickster to life. They exit. The bird flies, disappears, and then reappears in close up. It is preening itself when a Trickster, impersonating a member of the Toxic Beauty Queen’s world, enters. It beckons the bird. Wary at first, the bird draws nearer and finally eats out of the figure’s hand. The figure traps the bird in a cage. The scene dissolves and the Tricksters enter and hatch a plan to save the bird. They exit. The bird in the cage reappears and is freed by the Tricksters. The bird spreads enormous wings and flies away. A single feather falls slowly into the outstretched hand of a Trickster. The Trickster with the feather busts through the screen as the lights come up. The air raid siren sounds. Tricksters scramble to clear their puppet pieces and exit.)
Moment ‐ War on Undesirable Organisms
(Toxic Beauty Queen enters. She marches on like a soldier pin‐up, dressed in a provocative beach‐wrap and rubber gloves. Her 60’s music plays.)
TOXIC BEAUTY QUEEN
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Fellas, we’re fighting a WAR against non‐approved living matter! We have seen a sharp increase of undesirable organisms – but experts are working hard to make sure they’re contained and controlled. I know you’re eager to get in there and FIGHT, to protect our way of life! Volunteer today to fly an eradication bomber airplane and decimate this unregulated infestation. Eradication blasts have been increased to kill off this invasion. Chemical bombs are being dropped from the sky in record numbers, all over‐ and you can help! Don’t listen to rumors that say prospects are grim! Measure your courage and never go outside without your officially approved protective gear. If you keep a level head, you will make it home without worries of skin poisoning, hair loss or asphyxiation!
Keep a sharp eye out for undesirable organisms. Report any strange or unidentified living matter you spot. In times of emergency, be a man. When danger strikes, don't join the “run for the hills” fraternity! Don’t turn and bolt with your tail between your legs! The day we desert our duties is the day we fail. I’m proud to stand behind you! I salute you! And I’ll be waiting for you to come home!
(She is about to say “All Clear” but all that comes out of her mouth is an air raid. She is startled. She tries again. The siren sounds again. She discovers it only stops when she closes her mouth. After a beat she tries to open her mouth again and the siren sounds. Three people in hazmat suits rush out to respond. She closes her mouth and the sound stops. An upbeat 1960’s surf song blasts over the speakers. The hazmat suits come off revealing women in beach wear. They all dance the Dance of Denial, which speeds up, rewinds, and breaks down. They rush off leaving the Queen alone. She tries again to speak. It is the siren. She is mortified. She tries again and finds the sound swells and threatens to envelop her. She runs off stage in terror.)
Moment ‐ Ascension
(The same haunting a cappella melody from earlier plays, with echo and reverb effects. The tricksters enter carrying bundled up wings they have constructed and feathers they have collected. They attach the feathers to the wings. )
TRICKSTER 1 Once...
TRICKSTER 2 Strange stillness.
TRICKSTER 1 Only silence.
TRICKSTER 3
Control.
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TRICKSTER 2
Convenience.
TRICKSTER 1 People destroying. (Beat)
TRICKSTER 1 Voice!
TRICKSTER 3 Broken.
TRICKSTER 2
Beauty. Meaning.
TRICKSTER 3 Harmony.
TRICKSTER 3 Singing sunsets.
TRICKSTER 2 Singing memory.
TRICKSTER 1 Singing eons. (They sense danger and make their way toward the bird. When they reach her confinement, in a ritual fashion the tricksters dress the bird in the wings they have created and gather at her feet. She begins to flap. She freezes displaying her full wingspan as her wings illuminate. She ascends. Blackout. Sound of crashing waves.) (A single pool of light center stage illuminates feathers falling from the sky in silence. They settle in a pile on stage.)
Moment ‐ Epilogue
(A Hazmat Suit comes to sweep up the feathers. Lights fade to black).
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APPENDIX C
ARCHIVAL SCRIPT FOR TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
To whom it may concern.
Script written by Alison Bowie
Original production directed by Daniel Sack
Material created in rehearsal by Daniel Sack, Alison Bowie, Tiahna Harris, Ella Peterson, Kevin Cox, Christina Mailer‐Nastasi, Rachel Garbus and Pheobe
Vigor
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MOVEMENT 1 – The Tale of the Ocean
Blackout. The cast members are scattered about the space. They speak the following text, as if their voices are coming from a void, a vastness. A heartbeat whispers underneath the text. The sound of the wind shifts in and out, as if we are in the middle of the ocean. ELLA: We built a house in the ocean. CHRISTINA: A house in the middle of the wild, wild ocean. RACHEL: We built a boat and took our house into the ocean. KEVIN: We built a rig— TIAHNA: we built a rig— KEVIN: we built an oilrig. ELLA: We built a house in the middle of the ocean. Pause. RACHEL: We struck out into the unknown. CHRISTINA: We wanted new land, TIAHNA: New routes, KEVIN: Oil from whales, ELLA: Oil from the bottom of the deep sands below. Pause. CHRISTINA: We kept our water in bottles: KEVIN: water, water all around but not a drop to drink. RACHEL: We kept our nights in bottles, liquored up for the lull of days at sea. TIAHNA: We kept our promises in bottles— KEVIN: our ships in bottles— TIAHNA: our promises in bottles. ELLA: And when our ships went down and when our houses sank, RACHEL: when the storms bore down and when our houses sank, TIAHNA: we kept our promises and dreams, CHRISTINA: our cries and whispers in bottles. RACHEL: We kept our messages in bottles. ELLA: We sent our messages in bottles out to the wide and wild sea. MOVEMENT 2 ‐ Foreshadowing
Darkness, but not a complete blackout.
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Bottles begin to drop from above. STOP. A bag of bottles descends, spinning. It is glowing. The bag spills open and bottles pour down onto the stage. The light falls as well and lands in the middle of the bottles. Silence. MOVEMENT 3 – The Spill
Listings of oil spills begin to play (digital voice). The following will be heard: Forte.
Thomas W. Lawson. December 14, 1907. "7,400 tons".
Mezzo forte.
Lakeview Gusher. December 14, 1907. "1,230,000 tons".
African Queen Oil spill. December 30, 1958. "21,000 tons".
Mezzo piano.
Sea Star. December 19, 1972. "115,000 tons".
Argo Merchant. December 15, 1976. "25,000 tons".
Piano.
Rachel speaks the following using the flashlight as the list of oil spills continues.
As I was sailing along that summer, under a dazzling sky, and drifting lazily in Betelgeuse. the wind and sun, I found myself, one January 8, 1979. fine morning, in the green and stagnant "64,000 tons". waters of the Sargasso Sea, at a Ixtoc 1, oil spill. mysterious spot where thousands of tiny June 3, 1979. sparks, "454,000 tons". all shapes and all colours, were glimmering Nowruz Field Platform.
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in the early morning light. Bearing off, I February 4, 1983. was dumbfounded to see an area almost two
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More bags of bottles fall and recorded sound of bottles falling begins to play, piano to forte. Rachel stands up and begins to gently toss the ball, playing with it like a child. She tosses it higher and higher into the air. Suddenly, Ella catches the ball at its peak. MOVEMENT 4 –Truth and Order
Ella is at the top of the stairs. She drops the ball. The light shifts drastically. She begins to speak. ELLA: The first thing I’d like to say is that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the
disruption this *incident* has caused in everyone’s lives‐ including mine.
A series of strings of tape will be created in this movement. The tape being passed from one person to the next. When a person has the tape, they speak part of their narrative. Ella pulls the tape out and passes it along to the next person. The tape gets passed from person to person as the text continues. Each person begins by speaking one full section of their narrative as they pull down the tape. As the movement progresses, the narratives get fragmented and mixed together. Eventually they are all speaking together. RACHEL: You wouldn’t have known anything was wrong waking up that
morning. It was brilliant blue, blue like only the Gulf can be. That’s how I remember it. I was on break, down on the deck talking to Angus and Petey. That’s when it started shaking, like an earthquake or something. Just wrong, you know? Angus looked up from the drums he was moving and the look on his face was the scariest thing I have ever seen. It turned my blood all icy. I grabbed hold of one of those rusty drums, Angus starring at my like he knew something really bad was about to happen. Did he know it was coming? You know, that he was going to die? When the pipe blew up, everything near the scaffold got swept up into the air. There was no more than ten feet between us. Sometimes at night I still see him getting shot up into the air with all that oil and the flames. I don’t remember seeing it when it actually happened. Petey says that when he grabbed me I was just standing there, clutching the drum, looking at where Angus had been.
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TIAHNA: 10:21 AM. Our fire boat was swiftly on the scene to hose down the pitiful remnants of that ghastly oil rig. Two cutters, four helicopters, and a rescue plane. The cutters worked all through the night. 1,940 square miles surveyed and nothing. Already eleven men gone and seventeen others maimed. Time to accept that there is no reasonable possibility that any of those missing are still alive. Time to accept that there is no reasonable possibility that any of those missing are still alive. We issued warnings beforehand we should have seen it coming. At least eighteen pollution citations in ten years. Sixteen fires as well. They violated federal regulations that were there for a reason; they ignored crucial warnings that were not put there for banter and made horrendous decisions during the cementing of that well. Vital information regarding the pressure data appeared on the monitors during a smoke break, but he can’t be blamed. Stock has plummeted, but I’d say that the drill pipe would have buckled regardless. Besides, we’re all in this together. The enemy here is the oil.
KEVIN: One of our top stories this evening goes across the pond to the
Gulf of Mexico, where scientists have finally claimed victory in their three‐month ordeal of containing and capping the oil spill created by April’s explosion at the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. The impact of the disaster continues to make itself felt through the American media. An editorial in USA Today was critical of BP, saying that the explosion "was likely the result of corner‐ cutting and risk‐taking ingrained in BP's culture." On CNN, Ted Turner commented "I think maybe we ought to just leave the coal in the ground and go with solar and wind power and geo‐thermals”. Here in the UK, there is still much anger at the American press and news outlets for the consistent usage of the name "British Petroleum" for the company. As our local viewers know, but our American viewers might not, the company has been properly known and incorporated as “BP” for the past ten years, and its slogan is “Beyond Petroleum”. This could be considered 'dumping' the blame onto the innocent British people. There have been many calls for Prime Minister David Cameron to protect British
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interests in America. Channel 4’s Jon Snow said that United States President Barack Obama "is now at war" with BP.
CHRISTINA: My 5 year old son, Avery, asked me after watching the news on
TV what a BP was and why did they spill all of their oil into the ocean. How do you explain such a messy situation when you, yourself, don’t even know the answer? Around 10pm on April 20, my husband, John, and my son were watching cartoons while I was doing the dishes in the kitchen and suddenly Avery shouted: “Mom! The ocean is bleeding!” All I could think about was what this meant for us, for John’s fishing market, for Avery’s school, and for our daily meals. On April 22, we drove two hours down to the coast of Louisiana. John wanted to see the damage for himself. He wanted to go alone so that he could check up on his fishing market, but when Avery found out that his father was going he demanded that he come along with him. I was afraid Avery was too young to understand what was in front of him but his father said that maybe it was time Avery saw the reality of mankind. With each passing mile the awful stench of burning oil wafted through the air, growing stronger and stronger. There was oil everywhere. John’s business was sure to be fucked; all hope was lost. On the drive back home, Avery told me that he wanted to become a Marine Biologist so that he could help stop the ocean from bleeding and save Daddy’s business. I looked at him and he smiled. I began to cry.
ELLA: Believe me, there’s no one who wants this over more than I do.
Since April 20, I have spent a great deal of my time in the Gulf Coast region and in the incident command centre in Houston, and let there be no mistake ‐ I understand how serious this situation is. I’d certainly like my life back. 2 cancelled holidays and a son’s birthday party overshadowed by this event is not something I’d wish for. I want to acknowledge the questions that you and the public are rightly asking. How could this happen? How damaging is the spill to the environment? Why is it taking so long to stop the flow of oil and gas into the Gulf? We don't yet have answers to all these important questions. Of course we are trying our hardest to resolve the situation. But
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people must keep their perspective. The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean and so the volume of oil we are putting into it is tiny in relation to its total water volume. The environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be extremely modest. Perspective is key: it must be kept in times of tragedy. People are giving me grief, but at the end of the day, I’m a Brit. I can take it.
Underneath the passages begins a list of dates, read is the same voice as the list of dates at the beginning. It starts with April 20, the date when the spill occurred. It ends with July 20. As the speaking gets more frantic, the dates get louder and louder. A heartbeat also exists. It gets louder and louder as well. Panic. The lights flicker and go out. MOVEMENT 5 – Searching for Hope
In darkness, Rachel descends the stairs with the glowing ball. She stops several times, reading sections of the following passage: RACHEL: The raft is giving way beneath me, the bottles drifting off to the
four winds as the currents call them home. There is no sign of land. I am like that polar bear of its thinning island of ice: my house is sinking to the wide and wild sea. I have placed a message in each tiny vessel as it departs, in the hopes that one may find you. But you must also know that your every reading is a taking from my vessel; every message I send is one less buoy to keep me afloat.
Ella descends the staircase with the use of a single flashlight. Perhaps she calls out, “Hello? Is anyone there?” She sings a children’s song to herself. (“Ten green bottles, sitting on a wall…”) She searches in the darkness, eventually finding Kevin, who is building a structure out of tape and bottles under the safety of the tape structure. She tries to get his attention, but he does not respond. “Can you hear me? Why can’t you talk to me?” He continues to build. The others begin to move through the bottles in the darkness. The following sequence of events is repeated: Searching with the light. Finding a message in a bottle. Stop.
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Searching for help. Found. Stop. Shining the light on the bottle. Move. Lift. Read. Passing the light. The game continues. Once a message has been read, it is attached to the tape. The bottle is passed to Kevin. A second flashlight becomes illuminated at some point during the game. Not all of the messages in the bottles will be read. The order will change with every performance. The messages in the bottles that could be read out are included at the end of the script. TIAHNA: To the message in the last bottle, thrown out to sea with the
last hope of meeting another’s eye. How can I put all the stories I never told, the names of dear friends and regrets, the soft words I would have whispered in your ear; how can I put these many letters into this one foursquare sheet? The message that would contain all messages must remain unwritten, must say nothing. My open mouth. My blank stare. My blank page.
She is the last to get a message. The message is so overwhelming with possibilities that it takes away her ability to speak. She stuffs the message back into the bottle as if it were a disease and puts the bottle back down, upright, on the ground. She is alone. She can’t speak. MOVEMENT 6 – Return
A single light shines on Tiahna from above. It is a small column of light surrounds her. Tiahna begins to sign the following words (not necessarily in this order) and sentences that contain these words: I’m sorry Wish Heroes Missing
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Blue Earthquake Bleeding Surface International Wrong Tiahna begins signing as if she is learning the movements for the first time. She cannot communication in any other way. She is trying to communicate with the audience. Her movements get frantic, as she needs to get her message across. The other cast members, now wearing masks (they are all different animals), enter the stage one by one. The animals peak into the pool of light and then back away. They continue to move in the dark space around her. Ella is the last to enter the space. She peaks into the pool of light and then backs away. She then moves towards Tiahna, from behind, with purpose. The animals slowly move in closer to Tiahna, like a net closing in on her. The audience cannot see them until they get close enough to her that they can reach out and grab her. All of the animals stand up straight, neutral. Tiahna turns around. They are surrounding her. They each place their hands on her head as a mask is placed on her. She slowly turns around. She becomes a bird. The lighting shifts suddenly as she transforms. The others turn with her, returning to their animal states. They pose as if they were taking a family portrait. The animals turn quickly, as if they hear a noise. They disappear, but Tiahna stays there. She doesn’t know what is going on. They return, rolling out a giant glowing ball of tape. Tiahna approaches it slowly. She begins to tear open part of the ball and the other animals join in. She picks up the last bottle with the last message and thrusts it into the middle of the ball. The animals scatter. The tape structure begins to get torn down between movements. It begins to get balled up. The accumulation grows. All of the animals are gone. The wasteland is deserted. END
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List of Messages To Whom it May Concern: I write you these words as a warning. How many times I, too, thought I was saved when I was in fact drowning. To Whom it May Concern: You might read this letter as the preface to the book I did not write, the imagined book that not only asks for rescue but explains why it is so necessary that you—and only you—come to me. The impossible book that finally explains why you will never come. To Whom it May Concern: my house is on fire. All our houses are on fire. And we are still sleeping in the sun. To Whom It May Concern: Come find us, we are at the dock waving farewell to the ship that will take the children away and will never return. Dear lover. I am tired of dragging my heart against the repeated criticism of these waves. They say: I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. To the blue sky of my childhood fading to the grey sky of today. To Whom it May Concern: I write you all the time. That is all I do, on the back of the same card every day, outlining these same words every day. Every day growing darker. To Whom it May Concern: the tide is changing, has changed, or will change soon. If you are in need of hope, clinging to the last plank, to your last dollar, to the last drop of water in the last glass, this message will find you, but it will always arrive too late. To my broken men, I led you into battle with a heart made of clouds and it showed. To Whom It May Concern: By the time you read this I will be so far away. I can stay here no longer. Years from now, perhaps, my children’s children will discover your long‐awaited reply and finally put my bones to rest. To my dearly departed: The apples hang heavy on the trees this year and grass thickens without you. In your absence, the vines on the trellis have insinuated themselves into the living room, the bedroom. Empty bird nests grow stale in the fireplace. I sit here in the kitchen, in the cracking paint, watching the storm pass over, and listening for your knock on the door.
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Dear one, Look for me on all the forgotten islands and in all the forgotten coves, I will be waiting on the last you remember, the final shore you will remember just before you fall asleep. To the castaway stranded on the desert island: you can redeem this winning lottery ticket at your nearest convenience store. My dearest one, my only: I have nothing but contempt for you and the grace with which you abandoned me here. To the self‐righteous, to the preacher and the choir, to the man that talks to himself in the mirror, to you, always to you. To the escapist who left me here with all my shoelaces tied together in that impossible knot: If you return, brings scissors, knives, and all your sharp teeth. To my long lost love: how these days keep wearing at the hollows you left behind and how the wind howls through me. To the lonely: There is no one reading this over your shoulder. No one will take note of your departure. You can pack your bags in the morning hours and be gone long before the traffic, and drive and drive and drive and you will never arrive. To the recipient of this letter: Please come soon. Our food is running low and our water gone. We spend these listless days sucking the leather of our shoes, licking the tears from each other’s faces. There is not much time. To Whom It May Concern: This message was meant for you and only you. Let no other hear its contents or it will be too late. Dear Reader: I write you the most beautiful and promising words only to read them back to myself, to make something beautiful of this small island, to make promises that I can keep. To my long‐lost invisible friend: It all turned terribly dark with your departure, as if the world had lost its shadow. I lie awake at night, thinking you are at my side, but it is always some other invisible person. To the children we would have raised together: What stories we would have shared. What great adventures. The snowmen we would have built in our backyard would have lasted into fall. To Whom It May Concern: Please stop sending me the catalogues. Please remove me from your list of friends, of lovers, of confidantes, of long‐lost family members.
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Dear family and friends: treat this message as you would my absent body, stolen as it is by the sea. Make a place for it at the table and when the time comes, scatter its ashes far and wide. Dear Peter, I am sorry for not believing you. The key should be under the foot of the dresser. To Whom It May Concern: I write you these words as a warning. How many times I, too, thought I was saved when I was in fact drowning. To Whom It May Concern: You might read this letter as the preface to the book I did not write, the imagined book that not only asks for rescue but explains why it is so necessary that you – and only you – come to me. The impossible book that finally explains why you will never come. To Whom It May Concern: If you are in need of hope, clinging to the last plank, to your last dollar, to the last drop of water in the last glass, this message will find you, but it will always arrive too late. Dear one: Look for me on all the forgotten islands in all the forgotten coves. I will be waiting on the last you remember, the final shore you will remember just before you fall asleep. To the charming man who rescued me from Thursday afternoon: How many times I’ve looked through my pockets for the napkin with your number. To the lonely: There is no one reading this over your shoulder. No one will take note of your departure. You can pack your bags in the morning hours and be gone long before the traffic, and drive and drive and drive and you will never arrive. Dear Mum, I never had a chance to say how much I appreciated that cake you made for my sixteenth birthday. To Whom It May Concern: Who am I kidding? Nobody is concerned and nobody will ever be concerned. To Whom It May Concern: I am always apologizing to you. Dear Mum and Dad: I never got the chance to say what I needed to say. I forgive you. I hope you forgive me.
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APPENDIX D
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED ARCHIVAL SCRIPT
By Team Carwunmi
Inspired by Kübler‐Ross’ Five Stages of Grief Darkness: We open on an empty stage with a projector in center and musical instruments lined up in front of the curtains. Slowly, each of the players comes on stage perhaps in a flock formation led by the Emotions (Alex, Ryan and Tyler), the Muses (Kat and Tori), and then the Global Consciences (Jing and Shailee). Mother Earth (Corrina) enters and projects a series of transparencies. Mother Earth:
According to Elisabeth Kübler‐Ross, a person experiences five stages when grieving over a great loss or trauma. These stages comprise the “grief cycle”.
The Emotions: (in unison)
The stages are not linear. Muse #1 (Kat):
Some are experienced over and over. Muse #2 (Tori):
Some are never experienced. Mother Earth:
People have to pass through their own individual journey of coming to terms with loss.
Global Conscience #2 (Shailee):
The grief cycle model helps us understand our own— Global Conscience #1 (Jing Jing)
and other people's— The Emotions: (in unison)
—emotional reactions to personal trauma and change— The Muses: (in unison)
—irrespective of cause. (beat) The Five Stages are: Global Conscience #1 (Jing):
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Denial Emotion #2 (Alex):
Anger
Emotion #1 (Ryan) Bargaining
Global Conscience #2 (Shailee): Depression
Emotion #3 (Tyler):
And acceptance. Mother Earth (Corrina):
Now, we journey… The projector is struck as Mother Earth begins hooping center stage. She stands in a pool of light that serves as a boundary. The Emotions, Global Consciences and Muses watch as Mother Earth reacts to her alarm. At the close of her alarm, Mother Earth stands frozen with her hoop in center. She drops her head as… All: (in unison) Denial Stage 1: DENIAL The Global Consciences (Jing and Shailee) approach Mother Earth (Corrina) in denial speaking Chinese and Gujarati. Global Conscience #1 (Jing):
不！不要！这不可能，这不可能发生，鱼全部都没了，全部都没了，今天我有捞了一
趟，海面上全是油，让人恶心的油！不不！这是梦！你告诉我，我是在做梦吧，你让
我醒了吧，求你了，你带我离开这场噩梦！这一定是场噩梦，求求你了，让我离开这
里！我不相信，我也不接受！你凭什么这样对我！你凭什么！这不公平！求求你，求
求你，我求求你带我离开吧，！你看着我吧，你看看我吧，你带我离开啊，你让我醒
过了吧，这不是真的！我不接受!
NO! It can’t be! It cannot happen! Fishes are all gone! All gone! I went out to ocean, oil covered everywhere! Disgusting oil! No! no! this is a nightmare! Tell me this is a dream! Please wake me up! Please help me out of here! Please!!!!! I cant believe and I don’t accept this!! How could you treat me like this! How
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could you! This is not fair to me! No fair!! Please, please! I beg you!! I beg you please!!! Get me out of here! Please you look at me! You look at me please!!! Wake me up and pull me out of here! Because this can’t be real! I don’t accept this!
Global Conscience #2 (Shailee):
Maanvaa ma nathi aavtu. Aavu kem thai shake? Aani javabdaari kem nathi letu koi? Naa. Aa shakya j nathi. Aavu thai j naa shake. Maare Dariyaa ma tarava javu chhe, pan kaheta nahi ke hun naa jai shaku. Tamaaro kahevaa no matalab shun chhe? Aavu thaay j nahi. To pachhi Maachhli o nu shu? Maachhli o kem jai shake? Loko nu shu? E loko je aa jalcharo thi gujaran chalave chhe. Aaatla badha loko no dhandho, Rojgari kem bandh thai shake? Haji maara maanvaa ma nathi aavtu ke koi aani javabdaari kem nathi letu? koi no vaank nathi? koi madad kem nathi kartu. Bilkul maara manvaa ma nathi aavtu. Aa sachu nathi. Maherbaani kari amne koi madad karo.
I can’t believe this. How could this happen? How can no one be taking responsibility for this? No. this didn’t happen. Don’t tell me when I want to go swim in the ocean, that I cant. What do you mean? This couldn’t have happened. What about the fish? How can the fish be gone? What about the people? The people who thrive of the sea life. How can so many people be out of business? I can’t believe no one will take responsibility. There is no one to blame. There is no one to help. I just, can’t believe this. It can’t be true. Please Help Us.
As the Global Consciences’ dialogue intensifies, Mother Earth elevates her hoop until she cannot take it anymore. Mother Earth: (screams)
STOP IT! Mother Earth then drops her hoop and exits. As she exits, she attempts to make a connection with everyone else onstage, but they ignore her. “Half‐truths and Fairy Tales”: A reflection of DENIAL The Global Consciences, the Emotions, and the Muses stand reciting the following poem with music underscoring it: Muse #2 (Tori):
Rejection of the truth will Lead us blind into the world,
Emotion # 3 (Tyler):
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Half truths and corporate fairy tales Will fill your head with gold.
Emotion # 2 (Ryan):
While outside the marble buildings Mother's song has been denied
Global Conscience #1 (Jing):
How can we get her message to those Locked up tight inside?
Emotion #1 (Alex):
Out of all her answers They try so hard not to see.
Global Conscience #2 (Shailee):
So I search the sign to tell me of the truth that's meant to be.
Muse #1 (Kat):
I gather bits and pieces of the past that's covered up.
Muse #2 (Tori):
But there's nothing I can do‐ Can't find the pain, or make it stop.
Emotion #3 (Tyler):
They've boxed up all the evidence And marked it down to burn.
Emotion #2 (Ryan):
Through system's humble processing It never will return.
Global Conscience #1 (Jing):
Now free of all hard figures Doors are locked and eyes are closed.
Emotion #1 (Alex):
They justify the mess that's left and the muffled sound of blows.
Global Conscience #2 (Shailee):
But outside their marble buildings
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All the world resumes its turn. Muse #1 (Kat):
And what is left for us to know from the inferno— (music ceases) just the burn.
At the poem’s close, the Muses step forward and pick up Mother Earth’s hoop. They bow their head as… All (in unison):
Anger Stage 2: ANGER Emotion #2 plays drum to initiate the Global Consciences’ angry dance. We hear an angry voicemail, in which the beeps are left to our imagination—the brackets indicate a beep:
Dear Idiots, Read my [fucking] lips; you fight with Mother Earth and she will [fuck] you with a spoon. You think that crazy bitch gives a [fuck] whether you exist? No, she doesn't need us, we need her and taking a dump in her ocean is only gonna lead to our increasingly quickening extinction, because Mother Earth doesn't [fucking] play dude.
‐ Sincerely, NOT YOUR DUDE Music exploration of the various shades of anger by the Emotions (Alex, Ryan, and Tyler). After this exploration ends, we then hear… Next, we hear a young woman’s experience at a local seafood restaurant:
Dear Oil Spill,
The other day I went to my favorite seafood restaurant for a birthday celebration, with my new man. I got all dressed up, ready to chow down on some scrumptious crab legs, shrimp tails, and lobster claws. Turns out the restaurant is all outta of seafood because of you. Got crabs? I sure as hell don't! Sincerely, Down‐Right Hungry
The Muses walk forward four steps downstage and bow their heads as…
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All (in unison):
Bargaining Stage 3: BARGAINING The Muses sing: Muse #2 (Tori):
Give and take, Mother, Hours are long. Our first stop was To write this song. While the water's dark We can't move along. You've worked so hard‐ How can we right this wrong?
Both:
We've given time, we've given tears, For such a crime must we pay for years?
Muse #1 (Kat):
Give and take, Mother, What do you need? Tell us how And we'll take heed. Forget the money, Don't talk of greed. Provide the earth And we'll plant the seed.
Both: So take our time and take our tears Give us something to allay our fears.
Muse #2 (Tori):
We'll give you life Muse #1 (Kat):
We'll clean you up Muse #2 (Tori):
We'll show you how much we can love Muses #1 (Kat):
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We'll make you see how we can change Both:
Oh Mother, hear us when we say Muse #2 (Tori):
We'll show you how much we can do Muse #1 (Kat):
We will not stop until we're through
Muses: And if you will accept our deal We might just find a way to heal.
The Muses, Emotions, and Global Consciences form a circle around Mother Earth, who has a silver, slinky bracelet that she plays with. She then hands it to the nearest Muse. During this section, the silver slinky serves as a sacred conch. Muse #1 (Kat):
I promise to rebuild the bridges I have burned. Emotion #2 (Ryan):
I could drive a car like Fred Flintstone. It doesn’t need gasoline. Global Conscience #1 (Jing): I offer you the freedoms I hold dear. Emotion #1 (Alex): I am willing to give up my good looks… and part with the mediocre ones. Global Conscience #2 (Shailee): I will teach my future generations to be kind to the Earth. Emotion #3 (Tyler):
I swear to you, Mother Earth, that I would go without my ability to feel anything.
Muse #2 (Tori):
I would sacrifice my own life if it meant that this atrocity never happened. Muse #2 hands back the silver “conch” to Mother Earth, who plays with it for the last time. Then, Emotion #1 (Alex) begins drumming as his fellow Emotions, the Muses, Global Consciences, and Mother Earth get into place for “Beyond the Horizon.” The
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Emotions and Muses come together and sing, while Mother Earth and Global Consciences use flow lights (glowing poi) during the song in darkness. “Beyond the Horizon” Muse #1 (Kat)
Look across the hills the world is so lovely dark and deep Green and dark and deep.
But the brown and orange Haze in the sky won’t leave my mind It won’t let me sleep
All
All I can do is stand here watch the sun as it's risin’ but its hard for me to forget What’s Beyond the Horizon
Emotion #1 (Ryan)
I looked into the eyes of all those whose tired cries Turned silent and to no surprise I knew I could do nothing If there's something I can do To add some hope, to pull us through I would, but no one thinks its true when I say I can do something
All
All I can do is stand here watch the sun as it's risin’ but its hard for me to forget What’s Beyond the Horizon
Muse #2 (Tori)
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Like children we have no regard for the things we break heartless we think not of the world we shake
Emotion #2 (Alex)
Who's responsible? And who are we left to trust and what do we do If the culprit was us?
All
All I can do is stand here watch the sun as it's risin’ but it’s hard for me to forget What’s Beyond the Horizon (x2)
As the song closes, the ensemble gets into their final poses. On the cue of Global Conscience #2 (Shailee), All (in unison): Depression
Stage 4: DEPRESSION As the children’s letters are heard, the ensemble slowly gets into their places for the Sound of Sadness Dear President Obama,
I am just a little kid, but I wanted to see if you would please help my family? My Dad's restaurant is going out of business because people will not come to our restaurant anymore. My parents are hurting very much and I am very sad right now. We are going to have to move away and I don't want to move and leave my friends and my home. I don’t know what to do. Do you?
Sincerely, Isa
Dear God,
I hear my Mommy praying at night now. I know there's something wrong because when she prays she cries too. My Daddy's always at home now too and doesn't fish any more. They always talk really
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quiet, like they're telling secrets. Maybe if you tell Mommy what to do, she will smile again and won't cry so much. Maybe you could help. I don't like it when she cries because it makes me cry. Your friend, Lianna
Mother Earth initiates a communal hum as the Muses, Emotions and Global Consciences face various directions during the following montage of phrases from the children’s letters. Designate various directions as “images” of different scenarios. Please help The oil spills into the ocean Hurting very much The deaths of marine life Very sad Oil sludge washes ashore There’s something wrong The families whose livelihoods are affected Telling secrets An aerial view of the oil spill Because it makes me cry Seeking answers One by one, the Muses, Emotions and Mother Earth cease their hum; thus, leaving the Global Consciences to fend for themselves. Ultimately, the Global Consciences collapse. At this moment, the Muses reach out and help the Global Consciences. Mother Earth:
“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.”
~Viktor E. Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning
We then hear a collage of the ensemble asking, “What have we learned?” During the sound collage, Mother Earth stretches out her arms. Meanwhile, the Muses, Emotions and Global Consciences turn around facing the audience. As Mother Earth drops her head…
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All (in unison):
Acceptance. Stage 5: ACCEPTANCE The Emotions: (in unison) Acceptance is shown by people— Global Consciences (in unison): Who take responsibility for their actions. Muses (in unison): In this stage, people will find their inner peace and courage— Mother Earth (Corrina): As they move forward in life. “Don’t Be Left Behind”: A Finale of Hope
The Emotions play music, while the Muses sing. Meanwhile, Mother Earth and the Global Consciences dance.
Muses:
No matter what world we live in now We are all people of the earth Honor mother and the land From where we come
Voices of the first day Echo back to us Balance now with then And connect these separate worlds
People of the earth wake And face the dawn See the way things are Or be left behind (x5) Music break No matter what world we live in now We are all people of the earth Honor mother and the land From where we come
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People of the earth wake And face the dawn See the way things are Don’t be left behind (x4) Music ceases Don’t be left behind (A cappella)
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